Questions about downstream vendors

Overview

Once you get a list of downstream vendors from the recycler you spoke with, you have a bit of work ahead of you. There are some important follow up questions required to properly check out each vendor and the material they deal with. This article will examine each type of material and relevant questions to ask.

Circuit Board

High grade is generally circuit accepted as it is sent by OECD smelters. Recently OECD smelters started to accept low grade circuit board(like those found in CRT monitors). They only accept this grade of board if it pre-processed(removal of aluminum and steel etc). It is important to find out where this pre-processing happens. Does it happen at the vendors location, their downstream location, or do they not know. Often the low grade board is bought AS-IS by Chinese companies who do the pre-processing in unacceptable ways. So if the vendor only knows that their low grade board is going to Umicore in Belgium, but does not have knowledge of if and/or where the pre-processing occurs, this is a problem.