Five Star Rags Inc.: Leading Global Exporter and Sorting Specialist

Company overview

Five Star Rags Inc. is a Canadian exporter and recycler of used clothing based at 7500 Kimbel Street in Mississauga, in the Greater Toronto Area, with more than twenty years in the trade.

The company sells graded used clothing, shoes, accessories, handbags, toys and household items by the container, and runs a second line of industrial wipers and rags. Its stated markets are North America plus Africa, India, Pakistan and Central and South America.

North American origin is the point

Most of this directory is European. A Canadian supplier is a different product, not just a different address: the source pool is North American donation and collection stock, which carries a different brand mix and different sizing from anything sorted in the Netherlands or the UK.

That matters if you sell into markets where American labels carry a premium, and it matters in the other direction too, since North American sizing skews larger than European. Whether that helps or hurts depends entirely on who your customers are, so it is the first thing to think about before comparing the price per kilo against a European quote.

The container arithmetic is published, and it is worth reading

Five Star Rags puts its loading figures on the site, which few suppliers do:

• Bale weight: 100 lbs, roughly 45 kg.
• 20 ft container: 250 bales, with a physical limit around 25,000 lbs or 11,340 kg.
• 40 ft container: 570 bales, with a physical limit around 57,000 lbs or 25,855 kg.
• Minimum order: one 20 ft container, so 250 bales.

Multiply those out before you go further. Two hundred and fifty bales at 100 lbs is exactly 25,000 lbs, and 570 at 100 lbs is exactly 57,000, which means the stated bale counts fill the container to its weight limit rather than its volume. The company says it bales to close to full container utilisation, and the numbers back that up.

The practical use is comparison. A quoted container price tells you nothing on its own, because containers are not a unit of weight. Once you know the bale count and the bale weight you can convert any quote to a price per kilogram and put competing offers on the same axis. It is also worth noting that a 40 ft holds 2.28 times the bales of a 20 ft while costing far less than 2.28 times as much to ship, so the freight per kilo drops noticeably at the larger size. That is the standard reason to step up a container size, valid only if you can actually sell the extra volume rather than store it.

Two grades, described plainly

The grading ladder is short. Grade A covers the majority of sales, and there is a second category of clothing and mixed rags that may show visible wear or fading from washing.

Simplicity is not a weakness here, but it does mean the label carries a lot of weight, so establish in writing which of the two your quote refers to and what defect level Grade A allows. Buyers comparing several second-hand clothing suppliers should be aware that a two-step ladder and a six-step ladder are not directly comparable: what one company calls Grade A may sit between another company's Cream and Grade 1. The published grade vocabulary used across the trade is the reference point for that conversation.

The wiper line tells you something

Items too damaged to wear are converted into industrial wipers rather than discarded. The published types are jogging wiper, colour wiper, terry towel, white fleece, white mix, jean wiper and white t-shirt, supplied to automotive, chemical and painting industries in packs ranging from small poly bags to 1,000 lb bales.

Read that as more than an environmental note. A supplier with a working outlet for the unwearable fraction has somewhere profitable to send it, which reduces the incentive to bury it in your bale to make the weight. Suppliers without that outlet face a quieter temptation, and the difference shows up in what you find when you cut the strapping. Anyone building a wholesale supply chain should ask every candidate the same question: what happens to the goods that fail your sort? A concrete answer is a good sign. The way sorting operations split their output is the clearest window into how honest their top grade can afford to be.

Ordering and logistics

Orders are placed on downloadable forms, one for small bales and one for big bales, filled in with quantities and emailed back. The company says it generally arranges shipping and inland transport depending on destination, and can usually arrange exporter inspections on request.

Take the inspection offer seriously on a first order. When the minimum commitment is a full 20 ft container, a pre-shipment inspection is cheap insurance against a mismatch between what you understood Grade A to mean and what arrives at your warehouse. Prices are not published and are described as updated frequently, so quotes come from the management team directly.

Contact is [email protected] and (905) 405-8365.

Frequently asked questions

Where is Five Star Rags based?

At 7500 Kimbel Street, Mississauga, Ontario, in the Greater Toronto Area of Canada. The company has been in the trade for over twenty years.

What is the minimum order?

One 20 ft container, which is 250 bales of 100 lbs each, roughly 11,340 kg in total.

How many bales fit in a container?

A 20 ft container holds up to 250 bales of 100 lbs, and a 40 ft holds up to 570, filling each to its weight limit rather than its volume.

What grades does it sell?

Grade A for the majority of sales, plus a second category of clothing and mixed rags that may show visible wear or fading from washing.

Which markets does it ship to?

North America, along with Africa, India, Pakistan and Central and South America. Shipping and inland transport can generally be arranged by the company.