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To provide refilled cartridges, you need empties to start with. Empty cartridges or "cores" are the basis of your business. The problem is, how to get hold of them. Here is some guidance on the subject.

1. This is BIG Business. Collecting and selling cores is now a big international business run by brokers. There are a number of extremely large brokers getting involved who collect in and sell empty cartridges by the thousand.
2. The "Auction" Trend. There is a new, and to our mind, extremely worrying trend, in the brokerage business to list what is available and ask for offers. The broker then sells to the highest bidder. Beware! This is a minefield for the small remanufacturer. You must check out the market place and find out the sorts of prices that cores sell for or you will pay well over the odds for your empties.
3. Virgins and Remans. Reputable brokers will subdivide their stock into Virgin Cartridges which are OEM products that have not been remanufactured before and Remans which have been through the mill at least once before. Expect to pay a premium for Virgins. On the other hand, do not reject Remans entirely. You can pick them up cheaply and many will give good results even third time around. If you approach a broker and they do not distinguish between Virgins and Remans, we respectfully suggest that you leave them without purchasing.
4. Good and Bad Cores. When you buy cores, a number of them will not work. This is a fact of life, not a criticism of brokers. The majority of brokers do not test the cores in any way. They leave it up to you, the punter, to find out if they are any good. Bad cores are not just those that are damaged: they may look fine and work okay in a printer, but if the electronic foil is damaged there may well be nozzles that will not fire. The end result is that, however many hours of work you put in, the print quality will never be good.
5. Bearing the Cost. When you buy cores, remember to factor in the cost of bad cores. You pay £4.00 each for ten cores and five turn out to be bad: you have actually paid £8.00 for each core you can use! That is not cheap and will impact your profit margin. If you get a really bad batch of cores, do not be afraid to send them back to the broker.
6. Cheaper Sources. Brokers pay little if anything for their cores. Where do you think all those "charity donation" cores go? Most are schemes run by brokers whereby they give a fixed donation to the charity for each cartridge coming in, and then sell the cartridges on to remanufacturers. Look for your own local sources--maybe a school or a business and offer them cash for cartridges.
7. Eco-Friendly. Play the eco-card: Recycling is becoming more fashionable. Look for organisations trying to be more eco-friendly and offer to recycle their cartridges--for money!
8. Using the Customer's Cartridge. You obviously want to reuse your customers cartridges. Just remember, some of them will fail too. It is not a case that one brought in means one to go out! You will always need spares.

At Promax Imaging, we try to offer a one-stop shop to remanufacturers. However, please be aware that we do not broker cores.  We can supply very small numbers, but only if these are of cartridge types that we are not in need of ourselves. We are remanufacturers and process all the cores we can find from our own sources. We will however offer advice and help to customers trying to locate cores, including recommendations of reputable sources for cores.

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