Key takeaways
- Grade 4A has four possible futures decided in about eleven seconds at a bench.
- Sold as-is: $4.50–$6.00. Repaired: worth $7.25–$8.75 for $1.90–$4.25 of work.
- Cut into parts: $5 to $10 of pads, dividers or corner pieces from three sound panels.
- Baled: about a dollar. Correct for spent board, and the worst outcome for anything else.
Grade 4A is where the decisions get interesting. Above it, a box is stock. Below it, a box is fibre. At 4A, one grader spends about eleven seconds choosing between four futures that differ in value by a factor of eight.
Route one: sold as-is
Some customers want 4A exactly as it is. One-way outbound shipments, internal scrap collection, operations with their own repair bench. Price is $4.50 to $6.00, the box does one or two more jobs, and everybody is content.
We sell perhaps a third of 4A stock this way, almost entirely to repeat buyers who know precisely what they are getting.
Route two: the repair bench
If the damage is on the repairable list — opened joints, split flaps, failed staples, damaged corner tabs, a sound base under a worn body — it goes to the bench and comes back as 3A stock worth $7.25 to $8.75. Repair cost is $1.90 to $4.25.
The economics only work in batches. A single-box repair costs more in setup than the box is worth, which is why we will decline small toll-repair jobs rather than quote for them.
Route three: the cutting table
If the box cannot be a box — crushed vertical edge, delamination in one panel — but three or four panels are sound, it goes to the table.
| Output | Quantity | Unit value | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Layer pads, 18 × 24 in | 14 | $0.44 | $6.16 |
| Or: corner pieces | 36 | $0.28 | $10.08 |
| Or: slotted dividers | 6 | $0.95 | $5.70 |
| Or: small trays, cut and scored | 4 | $1.20 | $4.80 |
| Same board, baled instead | 12.5 lb | ≈ $0.04/lb | $0.50 |
Between five and ten dollars of parts, against fifty cents of fibre. That ratio is why the cutting table exists and why we actively buy damaged panels from customers who were about to bale them.
Route four: the baler
Damp, delaminated throughout, contaminated or odorous. It goes horizontal, gets weighed, and becomes mill feedstock worth roughly a dollar.
This is the correct destination for perhaps a third of what reaches 4A, and there is nothing wrong with it. Recycling is a good outcome. It is just the least good of the four available.
Somebody sent us eleven cut-open octabins expecting scrap value. They went out as three thousand corner pads for an appliance shipper down the road.
The eleven seconds
What the grader is actually checking, in order: are the vertical edges intact; is the board delaminating; what is the moisture reading; is there odour or residue; how many panels are sound and undamaged.
Five checks, four possible destinations, and a value range from fifty cents to ten dollars. It is the highest-leverage decision anybody in this building makes, and it is made several hundred times a day.
If you generate 4A material
Do not bale it without asking. We buy repairable boxes at $1.75 to $2.60 and damaged sound panels at $0.90 to $2.20 — both well above scrap value, and both routinely thrown away by sites that assumed a damaged box was worthless.
Questions