I.R.C.E.B. BUGGENHOUT Textile Wiping Cloths and Recycling since 1953

Company overview

I.R.C.E.B. Buggenhout nv has been in textile recycling since 1953, which makes it one of the oldest businesses in this directory still trading under its own name. It works from Kalkenstraat 106, 9255 Buggenhout, with a second site at Schaapveld 5, 9200 Dendermonde, under Belgian VAT number BE 0893.311.305, on +32 (0)52 33 30 77 and [email protected]. Named contacts are published, which is rarer than it should be: Filip Heyvaert on +32 476 73 34 26 and Harry Heyvaert on +32 475 42 79 36.

The company positions itself geographically as sitting centrally in the Antwerp–Brussels–Ghent triangle, and it says a site expansion carried out since 2010 lets it respond faster and shorten delivery times. It runs its own 24-tonne truck alongside a network of transport partners.

This is the wiping cloth end of the trade, and it deserves reading on its own

Almost every company in this directory sells wearable clothing first and mentions rags at the bottom of the page as what is left. I.R.C.E.B. does the opposite. Its stated focus is the recovery of worn clothing with an emphasis on the production and international wholesale of high-quality textile wiping cloths. Everything else on the site is secondary to that.

Understanding this line matters even if you never buy a single rag, because it is where roughly a fifth to a quarter of every sorting plant's intake ends up. A Belgian sorter in this catalogue reports 22% of its material going to recycling rather than reuse; a Hungarian plant reports the remainder after 44% wearable; a London collector's split leaves 20% outside clothing. The wiper trade is the buyer for a large part of that, and it is why sorting houses can afford to run at all. If the rag price collapses, so does the economics of sorting the wearable half.

The published range is a working taxonomy

The company lists what it calls a fraction of its range, and even that fraction is a complete grammar for the product:

• Coloured interlock; white interlock in two separate grades (1 and 2).
• Coloured polo and t-shirt material.
• Coloured woven sheeting; white woven sheeting.
• Coloured towelling from bathrobes or towels; white towelling.
• Coloured thin woven; white thin woven.

Two axes run through that list and they are the whole logic of the product. The first is white versus coloured, which is about dye transfer: a white cloth on a painted or finished surface leaves nothing behind, a coloured one can. The second is knit versus woven, that is, interlock and jersey against sheeting and thin woven cloth: knitted material absorbs and holds liquid, woven material wipes and does not shed. Towelling sits apart as the high-absorbency option.

Set that beside the wiper list published by a Houston exporter elsewhere in this catalogue — coloured and white towelling, coloured and white knit, fleece, near-white and all-white cotton, flannel, bedsheet, denim, heavy cotton, cut and uncut — and the same two axes appear, drawn up independently on another continent. Nobody in this trade publishes a wiper standard, but two houses arriving at the same categories from opposite sides of the Atlantic is close to evidence that one exists in practice. If you are specifying wipers, specify along those two axes and you will be understood anywhere.

The packaging tells you who the customer is

I.R.C.E.B. supplies its wipers in bales or boxes of 5, 10 or 25 kg, or in big bales, with other formats and personalisation on request. A five-kilo box is by a wide margin the smallest purchasable unit anywhere in this directory: a Dutch sorter of clothing sets its minimum at 5,000 kg, and the American houses start at 100 lb bags.

That difference is not a quirk, it follows from who buys the goods. A wiper customer is a garage, a print shop, a paint contractor or a factory maintenance store, ordering by the box and reordering monthly. A used clothing customer is a trader filling a container. Same raw material, entirely different distribution. It also means this is one of the few suppliers here a small business can approach without needing a container's worth of capital, and the company names the automotive, industrial and cleaning sectors as its markets.

What the site does not yet say

Two of the five pages, second-hand clothing and machines/equipment, currently read "page under construction". That is worth flagging rather than glossing over, because both would be interesting.

The machines and equipment heading has no equivalent anywhere else in this catalogue. Nobody else in the directory lists plant for sale, and a business that has been cutting and baling since 1953 is exactly the kind of company that would accumulate and resell balers, cutting tables and sorting conveyors. If you are equipping a sorting line, this is a page to ask about directly rather than wait for.

The second-hand clothing page being empty is the more practical gap. The company clearly handles worn clothing, since that is the raw material for everything else, but it publishes no grades, no bale weights for clothing, no minimum order and no destination markets on that side. The standard grade vocabulary is what to bring to that conversation, and the general mechanics of how sorting houses split incoming material explain where the wiper stream comes from in the first place.

Also absent: any tonnage or capacity figure, any certification, and any statement of which countries the clothing is collected in. The older listing against this entry carried an estimate of several hundred tonnes a month, which does not come from the company and should not be relied on.

How to approach them

For wipers, this is a straightforward supplier to deal with: name the sector, say whether you need white or coloured and knit or woven, give a monthly quantity and a box size, and ask for a price per kilo delivered. The own truck and the position in the Antwerp–Brussels–Ghent triangle mean Benelux delivery should be quick and quotable.

For clothing, treat the entry as a starting point rather than an offer, and ask the questions the site does not answer. And in either case ask directly about the equipment line, because a seventy-year-old plant that is willing to sell machinery is a useful contact for anyone setting up in this wholesale business rather than just buying from it.

Frequently asked questions

What does I.R.C.E.B. Buggenhout actually sell?

Its published focus is the production and international wholesale of textile wiping cloths made from recovered worn clothing. Second-hand clothing and machines are named as further activities, but both pages on the site are still under construction.

What wiper types are offered?

Coloured and white interlock, coloured polo and t-shirt material, coloured and white woven sheeting, coloured and white towelling from bathrobes and towels, and coloured and white thin woven cloth. The company says this is only part of its range.

What packaging and minimum quantity?

Bales or boxes of 5, 10 or 25 kg, plus big bales, with other packaging or personalisation on request. A 5 kg box is the smallest purchasable unit of any supplier in this directory.

How old is the company and where is it?

Trading in textile recycling since 1953, with sites at Kalkenstraat 106 in Buggenhout and Schaapveld 5 in Dendermonde, centrally placed in the Antwerp–Brussels–Ghent triangle. It has expanded its floor area since 2010.

Do they arrange transport?

The company runs its own 24-tonne truck and also uses a network of transport partners to meet delivery dates. No published price list or delivery terms accompany that, so ask for a delivered price when you enquire.