Volume 9: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Part 1: Wales
2. Setting the scene
The rendering industry

2.3 During the period covered by the Report, the rendering industry in England and Wales was usually considered as a single market, and separate from the market in Scotland. ¹ Prosper De Mulder (PDM) dominated the industry, holding an estimated UK market share of between 40 and 50 per cent from the early 1980s. ² Representatives of PDM told the Inquiry that raw materials for rendering could have been sourced from up to 200 miles away or nationally in the case of specialist plants rendering greaves only. ³ Another large company based in England had collection depots in Wales for raw materials. ⁴ Thus not all raw materials generated in Wales were rendered there. Arrangements for marketing the end products of rendering (chiefly meat and bone meal, and tallow) varied, but brokers or selling agents were widely used during this period. ⁵ Some plants sold meat and bone meal (MBM) directly to farmers, farm merchants and cooperatives, but the biggest users of MBM were animal feed compounders. ⁶