Guide
Toll compounding services
Updated
Toll compounding is blending for polymers: your resin, fillers and additives melted and mixed on a compounder's extruder or internal mixer for a fee.
Talk to a specialist Who owns the materials, who carries the price risk, and the clauses to settle before a formulation leaves your building.
What toll compounding services cover
A toll compounder runs your formulation on twin-screw extruders or internal mixers and returns pellets, strands or slabs. Ask for the extruder sizes and the throughput a line would run your formulation at, because the price is per hour of line time.
Ask whether the site can feed your additives at the ratios you need, including small additions such as pigments and stabilizers, and how it verifies the dosing.
Changeover between colors and polymers
A compounding line is cleaned between products by purging, and the purge material and the off-specification start-up are a loss. Under a toll that loss is yours, so agree how much is allowed and what happens to it.
Dust from fillers and powders
OSHA lists plastics and rubber, as well as dyes and metals, among materials that can be explosible in dust form. A compounder handling powdered additives and fillers should be able to show how it controls dust at the feeders.
Source: OSHA, Combustible dust (read 30 Oct 2026)