Industries
The same cage
solves five very
different problems.
A brewer and a township DPW crew both buy 275 gallon totes from us, and almost nothing else about their requirements overlaps. These pages are written per sector for exactly that reason.
Five sectors
Written by the people who load the trucks
Each page covers the typical jobs, the grade we recommend and why, the specific pitfalls that catch that sector out, and the fittings worth ordering with the totes.
Chemical & coatings
Blenders, distributors and coatings manufacturers are our largest customer group — and the most demanding, because the wrong bottle history is not a cosmetic problem for them.
Open sector →Food & beverage
Breweries, distilleries, syrup producers, juice packers and produce washers. For all of them the question is never 'is it clean' — it is 'what was in it before, and can you prove it'.
Open sector →Agriculture & growers
Row crop, orchard, greenhouse, livestock, maple, hemp and market gardens. Farms buy more totes per dollar of revenue than anyone and reuse them in ways we then sell to other farms.
Open sector →Water treatment
Municipal plants, industrial water treaters, pool and spa distributors, car washes and well-service contractors. Mostly polymer, hypochlorite, acid and plain water — each with its own compatibility quirk.
Open sector →Construction & municipal
Contractors, townships, DPW crews, drillers and site services. This sector buys the grades nobody else wants — and gets enormous value from them.
Open sector →Cross-sector cheat sheet
Which grade, by what you store
| Sector | Recommended grade | Format usually chosen | The classic mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chemical & coatings | Washed / Triple-Rinsed (W3), with Rebottled for sensitive chemistry | 41% of our pooling contracts | Permeation is permanent |
| Food & beverage | Food Grade, or Rebottled where a virgin interior is required | 28% when QA needs virgin HDPE | 'FDA approved' is not a thing for used containers |
| Agriculture & growers | Washed technical for inputs, Food Grade for anything animals or people drink | 2–12 units, often mixed grades | A full tote outweighs a small car |
| Water treatment | Washed (W3) for treatment chemistry, Food Grade or Rebottled for potable | 330 gal floor space is the constraint | Hypochlorite needs to breathe |
| Construction & municipal | Unwashed / As-Is and Technical, with cage-only for structural uses | 48 h we keep stock on the ground for this | A barrier set must be planned, not improvised |
Not on this list?
We also supply car washes, breweries' cleaning programmes, cannabis extractors, dairies, quarries and a surprising number of film production crews. Describe the job.