Page 4 from: Recycling International February issue | 2021

BEST PRACTICE

2020: a great year for
second-hand machinery
Many sectors are striving to get

back on their feet following the

coronavirus outbreak but one

recycling market is busier than

ever: that for second-hand

equipment. Julien Jean,

commercial manager of online

marketplace MyScrapMachine.

com, shares his experiences of a

year that will be hard to forget.

HOW WAS 2020 FOR YOU?
‘It’s been quite a year. We’ve had to constantly
adapt due to the pandemic and push back
some of our projects. We noticed a major peak
in traffic on our platform, starting in March, dur-
ing the first wave of the coronavirus in Europe.
This translated into a 25% increase in monthly
user activity. The downside is that that we’ve
had to postpone or cancel some decisions
regarding our PRO service and a subsequent
promotional campaign. On the whole, our
operations returned to normal in September.’

HOW DO YOU VIEW THE RECYCLING
MARKET RIGHT NOW?
‘It is doing a lot better lately with the price of
recycled materials reaching new highs in
December. I’d say the business sector is back
on track and companies are again interested in
investing in both new and second-hand equip-
ment. Let’s hope it stays that way.’

DID THE PANDEMIC AFFECT YOU MUCH?
‘To be honest, I don’t know the exact number
of machines sold on a monthly basis as our
platform focuses on building connections
between buyers and vendors. As I mentioned,
activity and sales have gone up in recent
months. And I’m happy to say the number of
vendors creating new accounts on our plat-
form is still growing. We feel a strong enthusi-
asm from recycling players and are very opti-
mistic for the months to come.’

WHAT WERE RECENT MILESTONES?
‘The major evolution of our platform is the
implementation of an efficient “bulk import”
feature. This enables an automatic update of
our vendors’ stocks to meet the demand of
our users. As you can imagine, this is quite a
timesaver. Also, we have also launched a part-
nership with the platform machineryscanner.
com, which provides third-party reviews of
equipment, as it really complements our busi-
ness. This has been a success so far.’

WHAT KIND OF EQUIPMENT IS MOST
POPULAR AT THE MOMENT?
‘Products in high demand are screeners, mate-
rial handlers, shears and balers, followed by
attachments. But this may vary from one week
to another. The biggest sales are in the exca-
vator category, which makes sense as it repre-
sents the greatest part of our online portfolio.
Recycling equipment still attracts a lot of
attention.’

DO YOU THINK A COMPANY LIKE
YOURS OFFERING DIGITAL SERVICES
WILL GAIN MOMENTUM?
‘Our platform went online in April 2019 and
the numbers have shown consistent and con-
siderable growth since then. Regardless of
how much our visitors know about software,
they enjoy having an easy overview of our
complete online equipment database. They
can search for whatever they like and cannot
get lost. I think our future is bright as the digi-
talisation trend has only just kicked off in the
construction and demolition and recycling
industries. As I see it, we have already secured
a great spot for ourselves by entering the mar-
ket early. For now, the recycling sector is still
catching up with the rest of the world but look
around and you can see it is changing and
evolving. More recyclers and technology pro-
viders are investing heavily in digitalisation.
That’s the way of doing business in the future.’

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS AND GOALS
FOR 2021?
‘The latest version of our website www.
myscrapmachine.com allows clients to choose
what kind of profile suits them best, depend-
ing on the number of machines they put up for
sale. We have launched our PRO service to
help put our members’ machines in the spot-
light on different networks. This will improve
visibility even more, further boosting our cli-
ents’ sales.’

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