28 January 2026 – Plastics News
ResinSurplus Platform Tackles Surplus Materials
Industry Veteran Chris Marinello to Launch ResinSurplus
A new enterprise-grade marketplace offers producers, distributors, and manufacturers a transparent solution for surplus plastic materials.
ResinSurplus, a platform designed to address surplus plastic material challenges, founded by industry veteran and Archer Consulting CEO Chris Marinello, will debut on February 1, 2026.
The platform will introduce a disciplined, enterprise-grade marketplace for surplus plastic resins, colorants, additives, and thermoformer materials.
“Over the last 40+ years — and especially through my work as CEO of Archer Consulting — I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with resin producers, distributors, and plastic manufacturing companies across North America,” Marinello said. “One issue has followed me into nearly every engagement: excess material inventory quietly destroying value.”
Marinello noted this problem, often caused by production overruns, customer changes, grade transitions, forecast errors, and reformulations, has led to perfectly usable materials being written down, cleared inefficiently, or managed in ways that detract from core business operations.
Moreover, Marinello explained that ResinSurplus will offer a solution by providing a controlled, complementary channel — not a replacement — for managing surplus inventory. Sellers retain full discretion, visibility, and approval authority throughout the process, ensuring transparency and efficiency.
“Surplus material isn’t a pricing problem; it’s an execution problem,” Marinello said.
ResinSurplus is designed to tackle this execution challenge head-on, offering a disciplined approach to inventory management that benefits producers, distributors, and manufacturers of all sizes.
“I launched this platform because I’ve lived this problem — both inside operating companies and alongside clients trying to solve it,” Marinello concluded. “The industry deserves a more disciplined, transparent way to manage excess inventory.”
Marinello noted that upon its launch, the platform will focus on surplus plastic resins, with plans to expand into colorants, additives, and thermoformer materials in upcoming updates. By creating a transparent and efficient marketplace, ResinSurplus aims to empower the industry to manage excess inventory more effectively, reduce waste, and unlock hidden value.
ResinSurplus is poised to change how the industry handles surplus materials, providing a much-needed solution to a long-standing problem.
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ResinSurplus aims to monetize surplus plastic materials while improving efficiency across the value chain.
At a Glance
- ResinSurplus creates enterprise-grade marketplace for surplus plastic resins and additives.
- Platform provides dedicated seller portals with bulk listing workflows and governance features.
- Thermoformers and processors gain faster access to verified materials reducing procurement time.
In recent years, Archer Consulting CEO Chris Marinello has observed a recurring inefficiency across the plastics value chain: Quality materials sitting idle or discounted in opaque ways, while processors lose time and margin sourcing, qualifying, and securing supply.
This motivated Marinello to found ResinSurplus, a platform designed to address surplus plastic material challenges. The platform introduces a disciplined, enterprise-grade marketplace for surplus plastic resins, colorants, additives, and thermoformer materials.
ResinSurplus, which launched this week, is a B2B online marketplace aimed at assisting manufacturers and processors in transforming surplus plastics materials inventory into working capital.
“Excess inventory is not rare — it is structural,” Marinello said in an interview with PlasticsToday, noting it can include forecast errors, program changes, spec drift, packaging changes, overbuys, transition lots, and customer cancellations.
The initial seeds for developing ResinSurplus were sown when Marinello built and ran a custom injection molding business. Like many processors, he routinely accumulated excess materials from job changes, customer-driven spec shifts, and end-of-run overages.
“There was rarely a clean, value-preserving path to rehome that material,” he said. “The practical ‘options’ were often landfill or selling for pennies on the dollar to recyclers — despite the fact that much of it remained perfectly usable.”
That friction stayed with Marinello throughout his manufacturing career, and it became even more apparent in consulting, where he saw surplus volumes ranging from a few hundred pounds to an entire railcar — one example being a full railcar of HDPE — still trapped in inefficient channels.
A professional solution for small & large processors
“In its original concept, ResinSurplus was geared squarely toward small mom-and-pop manufacturers — companies that consistently struggle to balance material positions and cash,” Marinello said. “When surplus material builds up, they typically have only bad choices: Accept pennies back from a recycler, write it off entirely, or pay to landfill it. The platform was designed to give those businesses a professional, value-preserving way to convert idle inventory into cash.”
Marinello explained that the model has since expanded to be more inclusive by design. Smaller processors can now participate in the same marketplace and operating discipline as larger manufacturers, distributors, and producers — standing shoulder-to-shoulder with major organizations.
“That broader participation is what ultimately creates liquidity, improves price discovery, and makes the marketplace useful for everyone in the ecosystem,” he said.
ResinSurplus is designed to convert that friction into a controlled, transparent transaction path: Sellers can monetize surplus faster, while buyers gain access to verified opportunities without relying solely on one-off phone calls, incomplete spreadsheets, or closed networks.
For processors, Marinello explained that the practical impact is speed and optionality. ResinSurplus is intended to:
- Reduce procurement lead time for off-spec, wide-spec, transition, and surplus lots that still meet application needs
- Provide additional sourcing resilience when prime supply is tight or when demand spikes
- Improve cost competitiveness by expanding access to secondary-market material while maintaining governance and documentation discipline
- Reduce downtime risk by enabling faster discovery of “good enough, verified” material for non-critical or well-understood applications (where qualification requirements allow)
Differentiators in a crowded market
In a crowded market, Marinello said ResinSurplus differentiates itself from other surplus material marketplaces.
“Most surplus channels are either highly informal (relationship-dependent) or broadly ‘classifieds-like,'” he said. “Our focus is enterprise-grade execution — built for how distributors and producers actually work.”
Key differentiators of the platform include:
- Dedicated seller portals: These provide administrative control and allow for distributor-managed environments, offering a tailored experience rather than a generic, one-size-fits-all posting approach
- Bulk and structured listing workflows: Designed to accommodate higher-volume organizations, moving beyond the limitations of individual, one-off listings
- Governance and traceability: Standardized listing fields, clear documentation expectations, and a consistent audit trail spanning from the initial listing to the final transaction
- Seamless integration: Aligns with existing customer support and commercial workflows, ensuring sellers can integrate the platform into broader operational strategies
Benefits for producers, distributors & thermoformers
At launch, ResinSurplus is designed to cater to producers and distributors managing recurring surplus streams, such as transition lots, packaging changes, product rationalization, and cancellations. The platform serves as a controlled monetization channel that integrates seamlessly with their existing operations, ensuring it does not disrupt core commercial strategies.
Processors with multi-site operations and recurring qualification capabilities — including film, injection, extrusion, and compounding — can rapidly assess alternatives and strategically utilize surplus materials for suitable applications. Thermoformers and packaging converters also benefit, as the platform addresses material cost and availability challenges that directly impact margins and delivery performance.
Across all use cases, the goal is not to replace existing sourcing relationships but to introduce a governed secondary channel that reduces waste, enhances efficiency, and broadens material options.
Launching with resins, colorants & additives
ResinSurplus will launch with resins, colorants, additives, and thermoformer materials.
“We made the decision to include these categories from day one because they map to how processors actually buy and manage materials,” Marinello said. “Resin is rarely the only input that creates surplus or drives qualification friction — color and additive packages create the same problems: partial drums, obsolete colors, formulation changes, customer cancellations, and end-of-run leftovers that are too valuable to scrap but too inconvenient to move through traditional channels.”
Launching with these categories will broaden the platform’s appeal in three ways:
- More complete buying use cases: Buyers can source resin plus the modifiers that often determine whether material is usable in a given application
- Higher marketplace liquidity: More categories attract more participants, increasing transaction velocity and improving match rates
- Better surplus monetization: Sellers can monetize a wider set of stranded inventory — pellets, concentrates, additives, and thermoformer-grade materials — under a consistent governance model
Seller experience: transparency & control
Measures are in place to ensure transparency, control, and efficiency for sellers using the platform. The seller experience has been designed around control and repeatability, including:
- Clear seller-side administration: Organizations can manage users, listings, and process ownership
- Structured listing requirements: Reduces ambiguity and improves buyer confidence with consistent data fields and documentation expectations
- Workflow discipline: Supports faster cycle times — from listing creation to buyer engagement — without sacrificing governance
The objective, according to Marinello, is straightforward: Sellers should be able to move surplus efficiently while maintaining internal controls and protecting customer experience.
Long-term goals
ResinSurplus aims to become the most trusted operating layer for surplus and secondary plastics materials — where transactions are faster, more transparent, and more professionally governed than legacy channels.
Over time, the platform is designed to evolve into a more comprehensive solution, offering deeper category coverage across resins, colorants, additives, thermoformer materials, and other adjacent inputs. Marinello said it aims to provide participants with enhanced market intelligence, enabling them to better understand availability patterns, lead times, and pricing signals.
“The workflows are tailored to integrate seamlessly with enterprise operations, complementing existing commercial and customer support systems rather than creating redundant processes,” he said.
Expansion will follow a focused operating model that scales deliberately. Similar to Amazon’s initial strategy of starting with books before broadening its scope, Marinello said the platform prioritizes proven fundamentals, discards ineffective approaches, and grows methodically to ensure sustainable success.
“This evolution is happening at a time when AI can be used responsibly to pressure-test assumptions, stress scenarios, and refine operating hypotheses faster than traditional iteration cycles,” Marinello concluded. “That doesn’t replace real market feedback — but it does accelerate learning and decision quality.”
