Used Cooking Oil Supplier — Bulk UCO for Biodiesel

What used cooking oil is

Used cooking oil is vegetable oil that has already been through a commercial frying or cooking operation and is collected afterwards for use as an industrial raw material rather than as food. The source material is usually refined sunflower, palm, rapeseed or soybean oil, or a blend of them, which is why no two collection pools are compositionally identical. Frying changes the oil: heat and water drive hydrolysis, which releases free fatty acids, while oxidation and polymerisation build larger molecules. Food solids, water and salt come along with it.

Those changes are what the feedstock market prices. UCO is wanted precisely because it is a residue with no competing food or feed use, which is the basis on which it is treated as a waste-derived feedstock under several renewable fuel schemes. What a processor will pay depends on how much work is left to do before the material can be esterified or hydrotreated.

How UCO is graded for feedstock use

There is no single international grade table for used cooking oil in the way the Codex Alimentarius standard for named vegetable oils bounds virgin oils. In practice the market grades UCO on a short list of measurable properties, and a contract is built by putting a limit on each one.

• Free fatty acid content. The dominant variable. It reflects how hard the oil was worked and how long it stood before collection, and it largely determines the pretreatment route and the yield a processor can expect.
• Moisture, insolubles and unsaponifiables, often contracted together as MIU. Water and solids carry no fuel value, occupy tank space and interfere with processing.
• Total contamination. Filterable solids reported as a mass fraction, which tells a refiner how much filtration capacity the material will consume.
• Oxidation and polymerisation products. Oil that has been heated hard and long carries polymerised triglycerides that behave differently in pretreatment from fresh residue.
• Phosphorus, metals, sulphur and chlorides. Trace elements that matter to catalyst life in hydrotreating and to corrosion downstream.
• Source declaration. Whether the pool is catering oil, food manufacturing oil or a mixture, and whether any animal fat is present.

Grading and pricing move together. A tighter set of limits narrows the pool of material that qualifies, so the useful question is not which grade is best but which limits your own process genuinely needs held.

What a buyer specifies when purchasing

We do not publish specification figures for used cooking oil, and a buyer should treat any UCO supplier who does with caution. UCO is a collected material rather than a manufactured one, so a published datasheet would describe nothing in particular. The working method runs the other way: you state the limits your process requires, we confirm whether material meeting them is available for the volume and window you want, and the certificate of analysis issued for the lot reports what was actually loaded against those limits.

An enquiry that answers the points below comes back as a firm offer rather than a list of questions.

• The maximum free fatty acid content your pretreatment can accept.
• Your moisture limit and your insolubles limit, or a combined MIU maximum if you contract it that way.
• A total contamination maximum, with the test method named.
• Any trace element limits that protect your catalyst or your downstream equipment.
• Whether animal fat content is acceptable, capped or excluded outright.
• Volume, packing format, destination port and Incoterm.
• Any certification or traceability scheme your market obliges you to buy under.

Naming the laboratory method alongside each limit is what makes two suppliers' figures comparable. Where a parameter is critical to your process, state in the contract which method applies and whether pre-shipment testing is required, rather than relying on a number alone.

Certification and scheme requirements

Our manufacturing operation runs to HACCP and ISO 22000 food safety standards, and non-GMO grades are available on request across the edible oil range. Those are the certifications we hold.

Buyers placing UCO into European biofuel markets are frequently obliged to buy against a voluntary sustainability scheme, most commonly ISCC, because that is how a consignment is recognised as a waste-derived feedstock under the Renewable Energy Directive and counted towards a national obligation. We do not hold ISCC certification. If your market requires it, say so at the enquiry stage rather than after a contract is drafted, so that neither side spends time on a shipment your scheme cannot accept.

Collection and consolidation

UCO reaches export volume by aggregation. Restaurants, catering operations, bakeries and food manufacturing plants each generate small quantities. Those are collected, screened to take out the coarsest solids and free water, and then combined into a pool large enough to load.

Consolidation is where consistency is won or lost, because the pool inherits the properties of everything put into it.

• Segregation. Keeping catering oil separate from food manufacturing oil, and keeping any animal fat stream apart, preserves the options a buyer has later.
• Settling and filtration. Gravity separation and screening remove free water and large solids before the material is tanked.
• Homogenisation. A pool that has been circulated before sampling gives a representative result; one that has not will not.
• Sampling. A composite sample drawn at loading is the basis of the certificate of analysis, so how it is drawn matters as much as what it reports.

Packing formats

Packing follows the volume moving and what the receiving end can discharge. Bulk formats cost least per tonne and need tank facilities at destination; packed formats cost more per tonne and need only a forklift.

• Flexitank. A single-use liner that turns a standard shipping container into a bulk tank. The usual choice for a full container load into a port with liquid bulk handling.
• ISO tank. A reusable stainless steel tank container, suited to repeat lanes and to receivers with dedicated discharge equipment.
• IBC. Palletised and stackable, for part loads and for receivers with no tank intake.
• Drums of 190 kg. The most granular format, for small lots, trial quantities and destinations with limited handling equipment.

Tell us the destination port and the discharge facilities available there and we will say which formats are practical on that lane.

Documentation that travels with a consignment

Every consignment ships with a certificate of analysis and a certificate of origin. The certificate of analysis is lot-specific and reports the parameters agreed in the contract. The certificate of origin establishes where the material came from for customs purposes.

Alongside those, a shipment file normally carries the commercial invoice, the packing list and the bill of lading or waybill. Waste-derived feedstocks can attract requirements at import that virgin oils do not, depending on how the destination classifies the material, so name the import country early and we will confirm what else has to accompany the goods.

Trade terms

We quote FOB or CIF to a named port under Incoterms 2020. Under FOB you book the vessel and carry freight and marine insurance from the port of shipment; under CIF we arrange carriage and insurance to the port you name and quote a single landed figure. Either way the port has to be named in the contract, because a region is not a price.

Payment is by bank transfer (T/T) in EUR or USD. Lead time is typically 7 to 14 days from order confirmation, subject to packing format and loading window.

Enquiring

Refine Sunflower Oil manufactures and exports edible oils from Kyiv, Ukraine, and has been exporting since 2000. Write to export@refinesunfloweroil.com, or use the contact form, with your volume, the limits you need held, the packing format, the destination port and the Incoterm, together with any certification your market requires. Email is the quickest route to a firm answer.

• Container loading comparedFlexitank, drum and IBC set side by side
• FOB or CIFWhich trade term actually leaves a buyer better off
• Reading a lot certificateLine by line through a certificate of analysis
• Request a quotationSend volume, limits, packing and destination port

Related products and how we ship

UCO moves as a feedstock rather than a food product, so the packing and documentation differ from our edible grades.

• Export and logisticsHow we pack, document and ship each consignment
• Crude palm oil (CPO)Unrefined palm oil for refiners and processors
• All sunflower oil gradesThe full range we export, refined and crude