What is a fair rag price?

It’s the first thing almost every charity retailer asks a collector, and honestly, the truthful answer isn’t a number. The rate you’re paid for donated textiles, the “rag price,” is set by a global market that shifts week to week. So if someone quotes you a firm figure before they’ve even seen what your shops produce, take it with a pinch of salt.

Here’s what actually sets that price, why it’s fallen, what nudges it up and down, and how to tell whether the rate you’re on is a fair one.

There’s no such thing as one “rag price”

When your shops pass on the clothing that didn’t sell, it doesn’t have a fixed value. It’s baled, weighed, graded and sold on: most of it into reuse markets abroad, some into fibre recycling, a bit into industrial cloths. What a load is worth comes down to what’s inside it and what buyers further down the chain will pay that month. So the “rag price” is really a moving average of a dozen things, quoted as pence per kilo or pounds per tonne.

The trend has been downhill

It helps to know which way things have been heading. According to WRAP, the government-backed body that tracks the UK textiles market, the price paid for a tonne of donations from charity shops dropped from £432 in 2013 to £255 in 2023. Textile-bank material fell even harder, from £406 to £172.50 a tonne. And those are cash figures, before you even allow for inflation, so the real-terms fall is bigger still.

So if your rebate’s been shrinking, it’s not necessarily your collector going back on their word. The whole market has reset.

Why it dropped

WRAP pins it on a simple imbalance. There’s more used clothing around than the world can re-wear, and more and more of it is cheap, fast-fashion stuff that wasn’t built to last. More volume, lower quality. When less of a bale can be resold as clothing, the whole bale is worth less, and that works its way straight back to the rate a collector can afford to pay.

What moves it month to month

On top of that long slide, the rate bounces around for reasons that have nothing to do with your shops:

• Demand overseas. Most graded UK clothing is sold on to reuse markets abroad. When demand there dips, prices here follow within weeks.
• What’s in the mix. A load with more wearable clothing is worth more than one that’s mostly worn out.
• Shipping and the pound. It’s a cross-border trade, so freight costs and the exchange rate both feed into what a merchant can pay.

Which is why a number on its own tells you so little. A rate that looks great in a strong month can be undercut a fortnight later, while one that looks modest might be the one that actually sticks.

So how do you tell if a rate’s fair?

You can’t control the market, so look at the things you can. Four of them matter more than the headline number.

Get it in writing first. A collector worth working with agrees a rate per kilo up front and puts it in writing, not “we’ll sort it out after the van’s been.”

Make sure you’re paid on weights you can see. A rate only means something if the weight behind it is honest. Ask to be paid on what’s recorded at your own door, with a receipt there and then, not a figure worked out later at a depot you never visit.

Remember the rate is only half of it. A few extra pence a kilo isn’t worth much if collections get missed, the crew only takes clothing, or your volunteers lose an afternoon a week bagging things up to suit the collector. Reliability, and the hassle a collector takes off your plate, are worth real money too.

Ask how the rate’s set, and reviewed. You want someone who’ll explain the market to you when it moves, whichever way it’s going, not someone who goes quiet the moment you ask.

Questions worth asking any collector

Whether you’re weighing up collectors or just checking the one you’ve got, these six cut through most of the noise:

• Is the rate per kilo agreed in writing before we start?
• When do we actually get paid, at the collection or 30 to 60 days later?
• Whose weights is that based on, and can we see them?
• What will you take besides clothing, like shoes, bags, bric-a-brac, books and linens?
• Are you a registered waste carrier, and will you hand over the duty-of-care paperwork?
• Can we see a record of what was collected from each shop, and when?

Someone who answers all six without flinching is someone you can plan around. Someone who dodges them is offering a “great rate” you’ll never actually be able to check.

None of this needs a spreadsheet or an awkward conversation. It’s really just knowing what to look for, and once you do, a fair deal is a lot easier to spot.