Used cooking oil buyers and suppliers in Europe

What counts as UCO

In ISCC's waste and residues guidance, used cooking oil is oil or fat of vegetable or animal origin that has been used to cook food for people, and that is genuinely a waste: discarded, or required to be discarded. It must not be produced or contaminated on purpose to look like waste.

Not UCO: grease-trap or "brown" grease, which is a separate material; virgin oil labelled as used; mineral oil; and mixed non-food wastes.

Origin is part of the spec. UCO may be entirely vegetable, or partly animal where lard or tallow was the frying fat. Some national implementations only accept UCO entirely of vegetable origin for a biofuel claim. Animal-origin UCO can also fall under animal by-product rules. UCO is therefore not interchangeable with category 3 technical animal fat, even though some plants buy both.

The chain, and who takes title

Point of origin (restaurant, caterer, food factory) → collecting point → trader or trader with storage → pretreatment → biodiesel (FAME/UCOME), HVO, co-processing or SAF (HEFA) plant.

Integrated collector–biodiesel groups often consume what they collect. That does not rule them out: they may still buy extra bulk or sell treated feedstock. Intermediaries are frequently the best buyers, not an obstacle to bypass.

ISCC: qualification, not a purchase record

For EU renewable-fuel claims, UCO usually moves under ISCC EU (REDcert-EU is also recognised; the buyer decides which scheme it accepts). Certificates name the material, such as "Used cooking oil (UCO)" or "… entirely of vegetable origin". They also name the scope: collecting point, trader, trader with storage, processing unit, biodiesel plant, HVO plant, co-processing plant.

A valid certificate for the right material and scope is the strongest public qualification signal in this market. It still isn't evidence of a current purchase or sale, so OxyLens records it as qualification and looks for commercial evidence separately.

A certified parcel typically needs: a certificate covering both material and activity, a Proof of Sustainability per consignment with its greenhouse-gas value, waste-origin evidence back to the collecting point, and for imports additional origin and, where relevant, veterinary documents. The EU Union Database traces consignments for renewable-fuel accounting, but access is restricted to operators, schemes and authorities, so it is not a discovery source.

The specification that shows up in trade

There is no single public intake specification, and OxyLens does not invent one. Offers are commonly summarised as a short string of FFA / M&I / IV / sulphur figures. Always confirm whether each figure is a minimum, a maximum or a typical value, and on which basis it was measured.

Always ask which FFA basis a price refers to: European collector oil and long-haul imported oil are often discussed at very different FFA levels.

Customs codes: do not force one

Used cooking oil appears under several codes, including CN 1518 00 95, 1518 00 99 and 3825 10 00, and shipment records show others in heading 1518. Waste-versus-product status also changes shipment rules. Heading 1518 mixes chemically modified oils, inedible mixtures and used oil, so official 1518 trade statistics are not a UCO series. OxyLens does not publish a UCO trade-flow number derived from it.

Why public registers mislead

• National waste-carrier and collector registers list thousands of operators and cannot separate a 20-tonne aggregator from a van with a drum.
• Animal by-product establishment lists show eligibility for animal-origin material, not buying.
• Restricted databases such as the Union Database are not public.
• Company websites are where real buying and selling language lives, but it is written in a dozen languages and hidden behind "sustainability" pages.

That is why OxyLens treats company, facility and role as separate things. A certified collecting point, the site where the oil is bulked, and the trader that sells it may be three different records.

Regulatory context, briefly

Under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, UCO is an Annex IX Part B feedstock, alongside category 1 and 2 animal fats, not a Part A "advanced" one. Part B contributions are capped at EU level, and member states now differ on multipliers, so a buyer's destination market affects what the oil is worth to them. Mislabelled virgin or palm oil sold as UCO is the reason buyers audit collection bases and why traceability requirements keep tightening. Check the destination scheme before assuming any counting benefit.

What OxyLens looks for in this market

• Collecting points and traders that aggregate to tanker scale, with ISCC material and scope that match.
• Pretreatment, FAME, HVO and co-processing sites with public buying language or a feedstock desk.
• The facility behind each company, and whether the same group is also active in animal fats, glycerine or acid oils.
• What is fact, what is inference, and what is simply not published, such as a plant's FFA limit.

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