Been Offered Cigarette Filters As A Filler

This week was an odd week with my punch bag waste material supplier giving me a call and offering me cigarette filters as an additional filling option over and above what we already purchase from him. This was out the blue and I am always open to opportunities and will see how this works out.

I know all about cigarette filters having been in the cigarette industry for most of my working life and know this comes from the Flax plant and is basically an organic filler. Obviously these are unused and have no gone through the cigarette manufacturing process. I see no monetary value in this product in it's current form and he does not know that I know this.

The only problem they are not very dense and do not carry much weight so one would need to use this as a mix with other materials. The mask material that we currently use is a pain in the back side as it is light and needs to be compacted which takes time. The time is the problem as it slows down production and time is money when it comes to labor and numbers.

The waste material supplier is sending up a 100kg batch of cigarette filters as a sample test run so we can see if it will work out or not. I believe it will and more importantly I believe it will save us time as they are already compacted and this will be more of a case of mixing the right quantities together. This adds value to my business for this only reason as a time saver, but it is not a premium product like his other waste filler.

Waste material is hard to find and we need in the region of 30 -50 tons each month so when someone offers you a solution you have to follow it through and try and see if it will work. I really hope it does as he can offer 20 tons of this per month and we will discuss pricing after a test batch. There is no point in discussing or negotiating a price this before the sample batch has been tried.

Apparently this cigarette filter filler is being used in pillows and have seen something similar, but had no idea it was Flax. There must be an abundance of this material on the market which is good news for the likes of myself as the price must be cheap. In it's current form in this shape pillow fillers would not be interested and why the phone call to myself. This tells me this material is one step away from the dump as it literally has no real monetary value and that is really good news. He did not have to tell me that and that is what I am presuming and will stick with that assumption.

One man's trash is another man's treasure is a saying we have all heard before and in this case I have to act as if I am doing them a favor and do not really want it in order to low ball them. I know the value is virtually zero and then have to factor in the transport costs and add a small handling profit to find the sweet spot as a price point.

These are the types of negotiations I enjoy as it does become a game within a game which is the fun part. he will have a price in his head that he is hoping for and we are going nowhere near that price and I expect he will realise he does not hold the cards in this negotiation. I would like the supply of this material, but it is not essential as I have similar materials that take time that are very cheap and are a charity based payment agreement and not a profitable business opportunity.

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