One of the quietest costs in the recyclable materials trade is time. Not the time it takes to collect or process material - the time it takes to find a buyer, agree on specification, confirm price, and initiate a trade.
A generator with 200 tonnes of OCC-11 in the UK who needs to find a buyer in India does not start with a platform where they can list their material and receive bids. They start with a phone call to their broker. The broker contacts their network. Someone in that network contacts another broker. That broker eventually reaches a buyer in Chennai who is interested.
Three or four days have passed before the first price conversation has begun.
Then the specification needs to be agreed. What is the contamination level? What is the moisture? Is it baled to the right density? What documentation is available? Each of these questions is a separate conversation, often over email, often across time zones, often requiring the original generator to retrieve information they have but did not put in any structured format.
Another few days.
Then logistics. Who handles freight? What are the shipping terms? What does port-to-port cost at current rates? The generator does not know the answer - that is another call.
By the time the trade completes, two weeks have passed. For a trade that, with the right infrastructure, should be initiated in hours.
THE COST OF FRICTION
This friction has two costs.
The first is time. In a market where prices move weekly and sometimes daily, a two-week trade timeline means the price agreed at the start of the process may not reflect the price at the end. The generator bears that risk.
The second is opportunity cost. While this one trade was being assembled, how many other potential buyers did the generator not reach? How many other trades did not happen because the friction of finding a counterparty was too high?
Market infrastructure reduces friction. Not to zero - complex cross-border trades in material that requires specification, documentation, and logistics expertise will always require professional support. But the starting point - finding the buyer who wants your specific grade at your specific volume today - that is the friction a platform can address directly.
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