Illustrative sample. The plant, the weeks and the footage are synthetic.

Capture your own regrind
Procurement

Capture your own regrind

Approved fixes get an update every week. Paused, Declined and Done do not. In this sample the weekly reports are already written, so changing a status here does not change them.

We watch how much of your own scrap plastic gets molded again, from the press cameras and the ERP material records. Target: about 1,100 pounds a week.

$86,300USD/ yr EBITDA

Extra profit a year once this is running, after what it costs to run. Profit, not revenue.

~57,500lb less new plastic bought / yr

Scrap plastic from your own presses, ground up and fed back into the same job. Every pound you reuse is a pound of new plastic you never have to buy.

high confidence

Capex

$35,000

Payback

5 months

Difficulty

2 / 5

Time to implement

~12 weeks

The finding

  1. This plant molds plastic parts on about 26 injection presses, and every shot leaves more than the part: a sprue and runners, the plastic that fills the feed channels of the mold but is not something you can sell.

    • Regrind is grinding that clean scrap back into pellets and feeding it into the next batch, so plastic you already paid for gets molded again instead of thrown away.
    • Here a lot of that clean plastic is sold off cheap to a broker or thrown in the trash: the sprues, runners, startup scrap, and rejects leaving the building are resin the shop bought at full price and is now giving away at a fraction of it.
    • Walkthrough videoBulk boxes of mixed-color regrind by the dock waiting for a broker to haul them away at a steep discount, and runners and sprues from some presses going straight into the trash.
    • Walkthrough videoOperators dosing color and regrind into the hopper by scoop and by eye, not by weight.
    • Shop recordsChangeovers burn a long, resin-hungry purge, and fist-sized purge pucks pile up in the scrap bin.
    • Purchasing recordsAbout 5 million lb of resin bought a year at about $1.50 a lb, roughly $7.5M, with nothing in the ERP tracking how much of it leaves as clean scrap.
    • Read togetherThe dock boxes and the trash show the clean plastic leaving, the scoop-and-eye dosing shows why none of it can safely go back in, and the resin bill says what that costs; each on its own looks like normal housekeeping.

  3. Grind the clean plastic right at the press and feed it straight back into the same job, before it can get mixed up or dirty.

    • Put a small granulator (a grinder, about $3K to $15K) beside the presses that make the most runner, so the runners go back into the machine's throat within minutes, then a weigh-scale blender (a gravimetric blender, one that doses by weight instead of by scoop, about $8K to $20K) meters the regrind, virgin resin (new, unused resin), and color back in at the exact ratio the job allows.
    • First sort the job book into three buckets, virgin-only, regrind-capped, and unrestricted, and count savings only on the pounds a customer will actually let you regrind.
    • About $35K of equipment covers the first cells.
    • The mechanismThe material is nearly all profit because you already paid for it once; captured clean and kept to a single material, a runner molded again displaces virgin resin pound for pound.
      • Capturing your own runners and scrap on those jobs displaces about 2.3% of their pounds as virgin you no longer have to buy, roughly 57,500 lb, at about $1.50 a lb about $86K a year, for around $35K once, paid back in about five months.
    • Industry evidenceMany automotive, medical, and appearance-critical parts are spec-locked to virgin-only or cap regrind at 15% to 25% and limit how many times a pellet can be re-melted, because each re-melt weakens the plastic; the model gates out half the resin before it counts a dollar for exactly that reason.
      • Even on a virgin-only job, do not landfill the runner; clean single-material regrind is worth far more sold back than mixed scrap.

The math

Resin allowed to take regrind2,500,000

5,000,000 lb × 50% eligible

Virgin resin displaced57,500

2,500,000 lb × 2.3% yield gain

Resin cost avoided$86,250/ yr

57,500 lb × $1.5/lb

Share of resin eligible for regrind
%
Yield gain on eligible pounds
%
Granulators and blenders
$
Annual resin volume (lb)
Resin cost / lb
$

Deep dive

    • The whole saving rests on how many pounds are not spec-locked to virgin.
    • If the shop is heavy in automotive or medical work where the customer mandates virgin-only, the eligible pounds shrink and so does the money.
    • What it looks like on the floor if this is wrong: you stand up the grinders and find most jobs cannot take a single percent of regrind, so the cells sit idle.
    • The cheap check is to pull the customer specs and sort the book before buying anything.
    • The saving assumes clean plastic is leaving cheap right now, as broker regrind at a discount or as trash.
    • If the shop already grinds and reuses its runners well, there is little left to capture.
    • What it looks like on the floor if this is wrong: there are already grinders at the presses and the yield is tight, so the gain is small.
    • The check is virgin pounds bought against good pounds shipped, by weight.
    • Reused plastic only pays if it does not create defects.
    • Mixed materials, dirt, or too many re-melts turn the savings into rejects, and sensitive resins like PC, nylon, PBT, and PET go brittle when over-reground.
    • What it looks like on the floor if this is wrong: black specks, splay, and color drift climb on the regrind jobs, and a customer sends a lot back.
    • The guardrail is one grinder per material family, closed handling, and a tag that counts heat-history passes.
    • The dollar value of every pound you avoid buying rides on the resin price, which is a commodity that swings with the market.
    • What it looks like on the floor if this is wrong: the pounds saved are the same but the dollars move up or down with the resin index.
    • Re-check against a current price sheet before trusting the total.
Load-bearing
The card breaks if this is wrong.
Supportive
The card weakens but survives if this is wrong.
  • Risk

    The saving only counts pounds allowed to take regrind. If automotive and medical customers mandate virgin, the eligible pounds and the dollars shrink together.

    Early warning

    The job sort comes back mostly virgin-only, and the cells you installed run capped at a few percent or sit idle.

    Mitigation

    Sort the book before buying anything, and size the cells to the eligible pounds you actually confirm.

    At stake

    Most of the $86K if the eligible share collapses toward the low end.

  • Risk

    Mixed materials, dirt, or too many re-melts create black specks, splay, color drift, or brittle parts that fail at the customer.

    Early warning

    Scrap climbs on the regrind jobs; a customer flags specks, or a lot fails impact testing.

    Mitigation

    One grinder per material family, closed handling, heat-history tags, and tighter caps on PC, nylon, PBT, and PET.

    At stake

    A single rejected lot can cost $10K to $50K plus the customer relationship, more than a year of the saving.

  • Risk

    On small-runner jobs the noise, dust, and handling of a beside-press grinder cost more operator time than the resin it recovers.

    Early warning

    Operators leave the grinder off and let runners pile up or go to the trash.

    Mitigation

    Only put grinders where runner mass justifies them; right-size the unit; collect small-job runners for a central grind instead.

    At stake

    The extra labor cancels the saving on those cells.

  • Risk

    Without weigh-scale blending, regrind and color go in by eye, so you overshoot expensive color and additive and give back part of the resin saving.

    Early warning

    Color variation shot to shot; additive drums emptying faster than the recipe says.

    Mitigation

    Gravimetric (weigh-scale) dosing on the regrind cells; set and hold recipes per job.

    At stake

    $15K to $60K a year in over-dosed color and additive.

A. Why your runner is worth more than the broker pays

The plastic in the sprue and runners is not waste. It is resin you already paid full price for, in a known, clean, single grade. When you grind it up and sell it to a broker in a mixed bulk box, you get back a fraction of what you paid, because the broker cannot trust what is in the box. When you grind it at the press and feed it straight back into the same job, you get nearly the full value, because you know exactly what it is and it never had time to get dirty or mixed.

That is the whole idea: keep the plastic clean, keep it close to the press, and put it back in the same job within minutes.

B. The three buckets: virgin-only, capped, unrestricted

You cannot run regrind everywhere, so the first move is a sort, not a purchase. Go through the book and put every job in one of three buckets:

  • Virgin-only. The customer spec forbids any regrind, common on automotive, medical, and appearance-critical parts. Zero regrind counts here.
  • Regrind-capped. The spec allows regrind up to a limit, often 15% to 25%, and may cap heat-history passes. Count only up to the cap.
  • Unrestricted. No limit beyond keeping quality. Full recapture counts.

Only the capped and unrestricted pounds earn the saving. The model gates out half the resin on this basis before it counts a dollar, which is why the number is conservative.

C. Keeping regrind from becoming scrap

Reused plastic pays only if it does not create defects. The failure is contamination: a stray handful of the wrong material, dirt off the floor, or too many trips through the heat. The guardrails are boring and non-negotiable:

  • One grinder per material family, so you never mix nylon into polypropylene.
  • Closed, labeled bins, so regrind is traceable to its material.
  • A heat-history tag that counts how many times a batch has been re-melted, because each pass weakens the plastic. Cap the passes tighter on PC, nylon, PBT, and PET, which go brittle fastest.

D. Prove the eligible pounds before you buy a grinder

The entire case rests on how many pounds can legally take regrind. Pull the customer specs, sort the book, and pull the virgin-purchased-versus-good-shipped weights. If most of the book is virgin-only, this card is worth the low end and the money belongs elsewhere. If a real share is unrestricted, it is almost all profit, because you already paid for the resin once.

The records we did not have for this read and would ask for on day one. Each one replaces an estimate on this card with your own number.

  • Owner
    Materials / purchasing
    Why

    To size the eligible pounds and set the baseline of what you buy today, since every dollar scales off resin bought minus good parts shipped.

  • Owner
    Materials / purchasing
    Why

    To see how much clean plastic is leaving cheap today as broker regrind or trash, which is the pool this card recaptures.

  • Owner
    Quality manager
    Why

    To sort the book into virgin-only, capped, and unrestricted, the single sort that decides whether the card is worth $30K or $150K.

  • Owner
    Process engineering
    Why

    To rank which presses carry enough runner and scrap mass to earn a beside-press grinder first.