Reconditioning.
The full nine-stage spa treatment for an IBC tote, the same way we do it for every container that rolls into our Denver bay. 3 business-day turnaround, certificate included.
Tell us what you need
Same form on every page. Same human inbox. We answer every inquiry — promise.
Answer first: reconditioning is the process of taking a used IBC and bringing it back to a documented, certifiable state of cleanliness so it can be safely refilled. Our process has nine stages, takes about three business days, and produces a one-page Birth Certificate that follows the tote.
Stage by stage
1 — Intake
The tote rolls onto the bay floor. It gets weighed, photographed, assigned a tracking number on a tag we don’t remove, and logged into our system.
2 — Drain
Any residual liquid is pumped to a labeled drum and sent to our documented disposal partner (usually a fuel-blending facility for organics). We do not co-mingle residuals.
3 — Pressure Wash
Cold pressure wash inside and out to remove dust, mud, surface dirt and obvious gunk. Cages get the same treatment.
4 — Hot Wash
The recirculating workhorse. 165°F caustic wash recirculated through the bottle for 12 minutes. Breaks down oils, sugars, organics, and the kind of dried residue you can’t see anymore.
5 — Triple Rinse
Three potable-water rinses, with the final rinse held to a documented conductivity threshold. Conductivity is how we prove the rinse worked.
6 — Sanitize
For totes destined for food, beverage, cosmetic or pharma applications, a food-spec sanitization cycle. For industrial-grade work, we skip this stage and label the tote “industrial-clean.”
7 — Leak Test
The tote is filled with water. We watch the valve, the bunghole, and the bottle seam. Anything weeping fails. Failed totes go back to stage 4 or get re-bottled if they can’t hold water.
8 — Dimensional Inspection
Cage straightness, pallet condition, valve seat geometry, fill cap thread, dust cap. ASTM D2412 footprint check. Anything outside spec gets repaired or rejected.
9 — Birth Certificate
A one-page document with prior contents (when known), wash log, leak-test result, inspector name and tote tracking number. Printed, signed, photographed and emailed with the BOL.
Turnaround
Standard turnaround is three business days from intake to ship. Rush jobs are possible if the bays have capacity — ask in your inquiry. Larger orders (50+ totes) typically run on a 7–10 day cadence so we can dedicate a single bay to your batch.
Certifications & documentation
We don’t hide our process. We will send you, on request:
- Hot-wash temperature and dwell-time logs
- Conductivity results from the final rinse
- Photographs of the actual tote from intake through release
- Inspector name and certificate of conformance
- Disposal partner SDS for any prior-contents pumping
Toll reconditioning — sending us your own totes
About 30% of our reconditioning volume is "toll" work — customers ship their own totes to us, we run them through our process, and we ship them back. We bill per tote on a sliding scale that depends on prior contents, the level of certification you need, and the volume.
Why customers do this: they have a fleet of branded or specialty totes that they want to keep in circulation rather than replace. They have a regulated process where they need documented chain-of-custody on their own packaging. They have a high-value sanitary application where the validation work to introduce a "new" tote is more expensive than reconditioning the existing one.
| Toll service level | Per tote | Turnaround | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial wash | $38 | 3 business days | Pressure wash, hot wash, leak test, photos |
| Industrial certified | $48 | 3 business days | Above + Birth Certificate |
| Food-grade washed | $58 | 5 business days | Above + sanitization cycle + food-grade certificate |
| Food-grade with rebottle | $118 | 7 business days | Above + fresh HDPE bottle |
| Stainless CIP cycle | $72 | 5 business days | CIP-validated wash on stainless tank |
What you get back, and how
Every tote we recondition for you ships back with a Birth Certificate, photos of the cleaned tote, the wash log, and (for food-grade work) a Certificate of Conformance. The paperwork can be emailed in advance of physical delivery if you need it for inbound receiving.
Return freight is your responsibility unless you arrange it through our transportation service. Most toll customers bundle return freight into the same quote and we handle the whole leg.
Quality holds we will not negotiate on
There are five things we will refuse to do, no matter how much a customer pushes us, because each one undermines the whole reconditioning operation if we let it slide.
- We will not skip the leak test, even on a tight deadline.
- We will not certify a tote as food-grade without running the food-spec sanitization stage.
- We will not ship a tote whose prior contents we cannot document in writing.
- We will not refill a tote with contents that are incompatible with what it last held, regardless of the wash level.
- We will not sign a Birth Certificate without a second human inspecting the tote at stage 8.
If your job requires us to bend any of these, we will refer you to a different reconditioner. Saying no to those jobs is what makes our yes mean something.