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IBC
glossary.
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Short answer
94 terms you will meet buying, selling, washing, grading or shipping intermediate bulk containers — written in the sense the trade actually uses them, which is occasionally not the sense a dictionary would give.
A
- Accessorial
- A freight charge for anything beyond dock-to-dock carriage: liftgate, residential delivery, limited access, inside delivery, detention. Routinely a quarter of a small IBC freight bill. More →
- Air-hold test
- Pressurising a container to 3 psi and watching for loss over a timed hold. The test that separates Grade A from technical grade. More →
B
- Backhaul
- Freight carried on a return leg that would otherwise run empty. The reason buyback collections can be free. More →
- Bladder
- The HDPE inner receptacle of a composite IBC. Interchangeable with 'bottle'. What gets replaced in rebottling. More →
- Boss
- The moulded fitting on the bottle wall that the discharge valve threads into. Over-torquing it cracks the shoulder, which is unrepairable. More →
- Bottle
- The blow-moulded HDPE vessel inside the cage. Roughly 38 lb and 1.9–2.4 mm wall on a 275 gallon unit.
- Brim capacity
- The volume a container holds filled to the very top. Around 288 gallons on a '275 gallon' tote, and never a number you should plan on.
- Bund / bunded area
- A kerbed and sealed area that contains a spill from the containers inside it. Commonly required at 10% of aggregate volume or 100% of the largest container.
- Buttress thread
- The coarse, shallow, square-flanked thread used on most North American IBC outlets and caps. ≈2.40 in OD on a 2-inch outlet. Face-seals on a gasket — never use tape. More →
C
- Cage
- The welded galvanised tubular steel frame around the bottle. About 48 lb, and roughly 70% of the unit's embodied carbon.
- Cage only
- A frame and pallet sold without a bottle, usually from a unit whose bottle failed. $35–$60 and the cheapest line on our yard. More →
- Camlock
- A quick-release cam-and-groove coupling. The right choice when a tote is connected and disconnected frequently.
- Caustic
- Sodium hydroxide. At 1.5–2.5% and 160–180 °F it saponifies oils and hydrolyses sugars — the active ingredient in a proper wash cycle. More →
- Chalking
- The white powdery surface degradation of HDPE from UV exposure. A symptom of embrittlement, not just a cosmetic one.
- CIP (clean-in-place)
- Cleaning a vessel without disassembling it, by recirculating cleaning solution through a spray device. How our wash line works.
- Closed loop
- A supply arrangement in which containers never leave the supplier's custody chain: supplied, filled, collected, washed, returned. More →
- Composite IBC
- An IBC with a plastic inner receptacle and a separate rigid outer casing. The standard caged tote. UN code 31HA1 for liquids.
- Composite pallet
- A pallet base combining a steel frame with a plastic deck. Adds about 5.0 in and 24 lb. No exposed timber.
- Crazing
- A network of fine surface cracks in HDPE, typically at the lower bottle corners where hydrostatic stress is highest. The classic precursor to a weep. More →
- Cube-bound
- A load limited by trailer volume rather than weight. Empty IBCs are always cube-bound. More →
D
- Data plate
- The metal or laminated plate on the cage carrying the UN marking, capacity, tare, test pressure and inspection dates. No plate means no food-grade path. More →
- Date code
- The month-and-year element of a UN marking, e.g. 0326 for March 2026. Tells you the unit's age and likely UV exposure.
- Dedicated service
- Keeping a container on one product for life rather than changing it over. Standard practice in food and chemical use.
- DIN 61 / S60x6
- The 60 mm, 6 mm pitch outlet thread standard on European-made bottles. Not interchangeable with buttress. More →
- Discharge
- The outlet at the lower front of the bottle, normally 2 inches, with a butterfly or ball valve.
- Diversion rate
- The share of intake kept out of landfill. Says nothing about whether material was reused or destroyed — which is why the reuse-to-recycle split matters more. More →
- Drop test
- A UN qualification test dropping a filled IBC from 1.2 m onto an unyielding surface. Why IBCs are over-engineered for ordinary storage.
E
- EPDM
- Ethylene propylene diene rubber. The standard gasket material at the valve and cap. $3 and the first thing to replace.
- ESC (environmental stress cracking)
- Slow cracking of HDPE where a marginally aggressive chemical meets a region under tensile stress. The dangerous failure mode because it arrives months late. More →
F
- Fill cap
- The 6-inch screw closure on top of the bottle. Vented and solid versions; use vented for anything that gasses.
- First-flush diverter
- A device that dumps the first 10–20 gallons of roof runoff, which carries most of the contamination. More →
- Fleet buyback
- A standing programme to collect a customer's empties on a schedule at agreed grade prices. More →
- Food grade
- In our standard: edible prior contents documented from the data plate, plus a logged caustic CIP cycle, plus a passed air-hold test. All three. More →
- Four-way entry
- A pallet base a forklift can pick from any of its four sides. Standard on steel and composite bases, often absent on all-plastic.
G
- GHT
- Garden hose thread, 3/4 inch. Needs an adapter from buttress or S60x6 — our most-ordered part.
- GMA pallet
- The 48 × 40 inch North American grocery pallet standard. The IBC footprint, and the source of all its handling advantages.
- Grade A
- Our industrial tier: air-hold tested, square cage, sealing valve, sound pallet, legible plate. The correct default for non-edible bulk liquids. More →
- Gross weight
- Total filled weight: gallons × 8.345 × specific gravity + tare. More →
H
- HDPE
- High-density polyethylene. The bottle material. Tough, chemically resistant to most inorganic chemistry, semi-permeable, and destroyed by UV.
- Heel
- Residual product left in a nominally empty container. More than a trace heel makes a shipment a waste movement rather than a container movement.
- Hoop strength
- A bottle's resistance to outward bulging under hydrostatic load. Reduced by cutting below the shoulder radius — which is why top-cuts get a reinforcement band.
- Hydraulic test
- A pressure test with liquid, part of UN qualification. Commonly 100 kPa for composite IBCs.
I
- IBC
- Intermediate bulk container. Between a drum and a tank: typically 275–550 gallons, palletised, forklift-handled.
J
- Jig straightening
- Pressing an out-of-square cage back to true in a fixture. Part of rebottling; about one cage in seven fails it.
L
- Leakproofness test
- A periodic air test required on composite IBCs in regulated service, at 2.5 year intervals in the US under 49 CFR 180.350.
- Liftgate
- A hydraulic platform on a truck for sites without a dock. $95–$140 per stop and the most commonly forgotten accessorial.
- Limited access
- A freight surcharge for delivery to a farm, construction site, school, church or similar. $75–$110.
- Load centre
- The horizontal distance from the fork face to a load's centre of mass. Forklift ratings assume 24 inches; deep loads derate the truck.
- LTL
- Less-than-truckload. Shared-trailer freight. The only option below about ten units and expensive per unit.
M
- Manway
- A large gasketed opening in the top of a stainless IBC, typically 4–18 inches, for access and cleaning.
- Melt index
- A measure of polymer flow used to specify regrind quality. Lot-tested on our pellet output.
N
- Nominal capacity
- The marketing volume. A '275 gallon' tote is 1,000 litres, which is 264.2 US gallons. Always work in litres when it matters.
- NPT
- National pipe thread, tapered. Not an IBC thread — what you adapt to in order to connect pipe and hardware.
O
- One-way pooling
- Recovering containers from the customer's customer rather than from the filler's own site. More →
- Open-top drum
- A drum with a removable lid and lever-lock ring. What you want when you must reach inside.
P
- Packing group
- A hazard tier. X covers PG I–III, Y covers II–III, Z covers III only. Composite IBCs are almost always Y. More →
- Passivation
- A citric or nitric treatment restoring the chromium oxide layer on stainless after welding. The step that prevents pitting at welds. More →
- Payload
- Legal cargo weight. About 43,500 lb for a typical 53-foot van in the US.
- Pooling
- Sharing one physical fleet across several users with different seasonal peaks.
- Post-industrial regrind
- Reprocessed polymer from manufacturing or commercial sources, with known history and no consumer contamination. What our bottles become. More →
- Prior contents
- What a container held before. The single most important fact about a used IBC, and the basis of every grade above technical.
R
- Rebottling
- Fitting a new virgin HDPE bottle into a reclaimed, inspected, blasted and recoated cage. More →
- Reconditioning
- Washing plus gasket, valve, cap, cage and pallet work, finished with an air-hold test. What turns an incoming empty into Grade A stock. More →
- Regrind
- Granulated, washed and pelletised polymer. The terminal destination for about 7% of our intake.
- Reuse rate
- The share of intake returned to service as a container, rebottled, sold cage-only or fabricated. Ours is 93%. The number that actually matters.
- Reverse logistics
- Moving containers back up the supply chain rather than down it. The organisational gap this company exists to fill.
S
- S60x6
- See DIN 61. 60 mm OD, 6 mm pitch outlet thread on European bottles.
- Saponification
- The reaction converting fats and oils into soluble soaps under hot alkaline conditions. Why oil residues need caustic, not detergent.
- Scale ticket
- A weighbridge record of an inbound or outbound load. The source of our published tonnage figures.
- Scrap grade
- A container that cannot be washed, rebottled, sold cage-only or fabricated. About 7% of intake, after a second grader's review. More →
- Second look
- Our formal rule that nothing enters the regrind bunker until a second grader answers no to four salvage questions. It pulls back about 11%.
- Shoulder
- The curved transition between a bottle's vertical wall and its top. Where hoop strength lives, and where UV damage shows first.
- Sight tube / level gauge
- An external transparent tube showing liquid level. $29–$88 and far more reliable than a dipstick.
- Specific gravity (SG)
- A liquid's density relative to water. Multiply into gallons × 8.345 to get weight. Water 1.00, diesel 0.85, corn syrup 1.38.
- Spray ball
- A fixed perforated sphere that distributes CIP solution inside a tank. Standard on well-specified stainless IBCs.
- Stacking load
- The weight a cage is tested and permitted to carry above it. On the data plate, and distinct from the test value.
- Stainless 304 / 316L
- Austenitic stainless grades. 316L adds molybdenum for chloride and pitting resistance; 304 is cheaper and adequate for solvents and oils.
- Substitution rate
- In carbon accounting, how many new units one reused unit displaces. The single biggest assumption in our carbon math. More →
T
- Tare weight
- Empty weight. 118–132 lb for a 275 gallon unit depending on pallet type.
- Technical grade
- Sound and leak-free but not pressure tested and not pretty. Half the price of Grade A for identical service in non-critical use. More →
- Tight-head drum
- A closed-head drum with two bungs. Stronger and better sealing than open-top; what UN ratings usually apply to.
- Top-cut
- Removing the upper portion of a bottle on a heated-blade jig, with a sealed and finished edge. $65 and the basis of most fabricated builds.
- Tote
- Colloquial North American term for an IBC. Used interchangeably throughout this site.
- Tri-clamp
- A sanitary gasketed clamp fitting, standard on stainless IBCs in food and pharmaceutical service.
- Trub
- Protein and hop sediment left after brewing. Commonly collected in top-cut technical-grade totes. More →
- Truckload (TL)
- A dedicated trailer. 48 empties or 18 filled 275 gallon units. Cheapest per unit by a wide margin.
U
- UN 31HA1/Y
- Composite IBC for liquids, plastic inner, steel outer, rigid design, approved for packing groups II and III. More →
- UV sleeve
- A fitted opaque cover protecting the bottle from sunlight. $38 and roughly triples outdoor service life.
V
- Valve boss
- See Boss.
- Vented cap
- A fill cap with a one-way vent. Required for anything that off-gasses and for outdoor storage through temperature swings. $14.
- Virgin resin
- Polymer that has never been processed into a product. What a rebottled unit's new bottle is made from.
W
- Weight-bound
- A load limited by legal payload rather than trailer volume. Filled IBCs are always weight-bound.
- Will-call
- Customer collection from our yard. No minimum, paid at the gate, and the cheapest way to buy one or two units. More →
Z
- Zero landfill
- Our standing commitment that no process material leaves this plant for a landfill. Verified by the absence of disposal invoices since 2014. More →
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