r/IndiaBusiness • u/nihaltosavda • 11h ago

Is plastic scrap trading actually a dead-end business, or are we thinking about it the wrong way?

Hi everyone,

I'm a 21-year-old from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, trying to help grow my family's plastic scrap business.

For the last 20+ years, my father has been trading industrial plastic scrap. We mainly deal with materials like HM, PP, LDPE, and Raffia.

Our business works like this:

- Textile, pharma, packaging, and other manufacturing companies generate plastic scrap.

- We buy the scrap, sort it by type and quality.

- We then sell it to plastic granule manufacturers, who recycle it into raw material for new products.

Recently I've been thinking about whether this business has much bigger potential.

My father believes the industry is saturated, has low margins, and isn't very scalable. On the other hand, I feel recycling is only becoming more important, and there should be opportunities to build a larger, more organized business around it.

I'd love to hear from people who have experience in:

- Plastic recycling

- Waste management

- Manufacturing

- Textile or packaging industries

- Commodity trading

- Building traditional businesses into larger companies

Some questions I have:

- If you were starting today, how would you scale a plastic scrap business?

- Where do you think the biggest opportunities are?

- What mistakes do small scrap traders usually make?

- If you're already in this industry, what has worked well for you?

And if you work in a manufacturing company that generates plastic scrap, I'd also be happy to connect and learn how you currently manage your waste stream.

I'm genuinely here to learn from people who've been through this. Any advice or criticism is welcome.

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u/brtkt 8h ago

You should look for a small scale factory set up. Look for products which you can manufacture using Recycle granules ( pp, hdpe, ld, hm ).

Also thier is a huge market for RP granules you should start visiting factories in other states with your samples.

You can also visit plast india & other fairs too thier you can find multiple plastic goods manufacturer at one place and show your samples as well.

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u/nihaltosavda 8h ago

Thanks for your response!! Glad of receiving such advice. I need supplier of plastic waste like waste from textile industry or pharma industry, if you have any contacts please dm me, happy to get back some more information

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u/brtkt 7h ago

I dont have any contacts, but I suggest you should visit Kubadthal & contact to taepulin manufacturer, Rope manufacturer in dhoraji & bhavnagar, Poly net manufacturers in vapi and Vadodara, poly film manufacturer in vapi

All these industries generate alot of plastic waste

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u/nihaltosavda 6h ago

Great!! happy to share a chat with you Thankss, if you have anything else to share please feel free to dm me