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Reclaimed building materials, by the lot

Four hundred square metres of parquet, and three days to clear it.

Salvagio is the marketplace where demolition and strip-out contractors list what is coming out of a building, and architects, builders and makers buy it before the skip does.

List a lot Browse what is clearing
Listing time
Ten minutes, standing on the site, from a phone.
Seller commission
12% on completed sales. Free to list.
Collection
Arranged in-platform and quoted per lot.
Material study: reclaimed oak block parquet laid in a herringbone pattern, with visible grain and worn edges.
Timber Clears in 3 days

Oak block parquet, herringbone

SLV‑0412
Quantity
412 m²
Condition
Sound, bitumen backed
Origin
Office fit‑out, 1968
Must be gone by
26 Aug

Price now Step 2 of 4

£22 / m² £26

Steps down to £20/m² in 3 days, then £17/m² on the final day. Reserve £15/m².

How the clock works

Illustrative lot. Salvagio has not opened for trading yet — sample data shows the shape of a listing, not a live sale.

The problem

The material and the demand never meet.

A strip-out yields four hundred square metres of parquet, sixty solid-core doors and a tonne of brass ironmongery. All of it goes to landfill, because the contractor has three days to clear the site and no channel to sell through.

Scroll the diagram sideways →

Two paths that never cross On the upper path, a strip-out site produces sound material that goes into a skip and then to landfill within three days. On the lower path, an architect two suburbs away specifies the same material from a reclamation yard at roughly four times the price with a nine-week lead time. Nothing connects the two paths. TODAY · SUPPLY SIDE Strip-out site 412 m² parquet, 58 doors, 1.1 t brass ironmongery 3 DAYS Skip One phone call. Site clear on time. Landfill Embodied carbon written off. no channel between them TODAY · DEMAND SIDE Architect Two suburbs away. Specifying oak parquet. Reclamation yard Whatever is in stock, wherever it is. Specified anyway ~4× the price, ~9-week lead time.

Two lanes, both working exactly as designed, and no route between them. The contractor is not indifferent to waste — they are on programme. The architect is not indifferent to price — they have no other source. Multipliers and lead times shown are indicative of the pattern the market describes, not measured figures.

Three days is not enough time to sell anything

Listing sixty doors on a general marketplace means fifteen enquiries, twelve no-shows and a site that is still not clear on Friday.

Nobody knows what is coming out, or when

The buyer who wants the parquet has no way of learning it exists during the seventy-two hours in which it can be bought.

The tonnage disappears from the record

Material that could have been diverted is booked as waste, and the diversion evidence a sustainability lead needs never gets created.

How the marketplace works

One counterparty, one collection date, one payment.

The contractor deals with Salvagio, not with fifteen strangers. Buyers deal with Salvagio, not with a site manager who stops answering the phone. Everything between the two — matching, escrow, collection, the diversion record — sits in the middle.

Scroll the diagram sideways →

How a lot moves through Salvagio A contractor lists a lot from the site in about ten minutes. Salvagio publishes it, alerts buyers who follow that material category within range, holds the buyer's payment in escrow, and books a carrier. On collection, payment is released to the contractor and a diverted-tonnage record is issued to both sides. SELLER Strip-out contractor Site must be clear by a fixed date. Lists in 10 min. SALVAGIO 1  Listing & condition grading Photos, quantity, grade, deadline. 2  Alerts by category and radius Matched buyers only, in range. 3  Payment held in escrow Buyer pays first. Then it moves. 4  Collection booked and quoted Carrier, slot, site access brief. ON COLLECTION → PAYMENT RELEASED → DIVERSION RECORD ISSUED BUYERS Architects, builders, joiners, makers Following the categories FOLLOWED CATEGORIES Timber Brick Ironmongery 50 km LOT ALERT OFFER + PAYMENT SLOT + FUNDS

Salvagio sits between the two sides so that neither has to manage the other. The contractor's only obligation is access on the agreed day; the buyer's only obligation is to pay before the carrier is booked.

Listing

Ten minutes, standing in the dust.

A listing has to be finishable between a delivery and a site meeting, on a phone with one bar of signal and a cracked screen. Four screens, four decisions, no account set-up before you start.

  1. 00:00 – 02:30

    Step one: photographing the material through the phone's viewfinder.

    Photograph it where it lies

    Four or five frames of the actual material, in the actual light. No staging, no lightbox — buyers are grading condition, not shopping a catalogue.

  2. 02:30 – 05:00

    Step two: entering the quantity, four hundred and twelve square metres. QUANTITY 412 m² m² units

    Quantity, in the unit you'd shout across a site

    Square metres, linear metres, units, or tonnes. Salvagio converts to an estimated mass so the diversion figure holds up later.

  3. 05:00 – 07:30

    Step three: choosing a condition grade, with grade B selected. CONDITION GRADE A Reusable as is No prep needed B Sound, needs prep Bitumen backed C Salvage for parts Sold as seen

    Grade it honestly, in three words

    A, B or C, with a one-line note. Overstating a grade costs you the collection and the buyer, so the incentive runs the right way.

  4. 07:30 – 10:00

    Step four: setting the clearance date on a calendar and publishing the lot. MUST BE GONE BY MTWTFS 26 OPENING PRICE £26 / m² steps to £17 Publish lot

    Set the date it has to be gone

    The clearance date is the one field Salvagio will not let you skip. It sets the price ladder, the alert urgency and the collection window in one move.

Timings describe the flow we are building, measured on our own test listings. We will publish real median listing times once the founding cohort is trading.

The differentiator

Built around the contractor's clock, not the buyer's browse.

Every other route treats reclaimed material as stock that sits until someone wants it. On a live site it is the opposite: the material has a deadline, and after that deadline its value is negative — it costs money to remove.

So a Salvagio lot carries a hard clearance date, and the asking price steps down on a published ladder as that date approaches. The contractor sets the opening price and the reserve. Salvagio does the stepping.

That is the only reason a contractor under programme pressure would choose a marketplace over a skip: the clock is on their side of the table, and the site gets cleared either way.

Contractor sets the opening price Contractor sets the reserve Steps are published up front
Price ladder for lot SLV-0412 over fourteen days The asking price for the parquet lot opens at twenty-six pounds per square metre fourteen days before clearance, steps to twenty-two pounds at nine days, twenty pounds at five days, and seventeen pounds at two days. A reserve of fifteen pounds per square metre sits below the ladder. Today marks nine days out, at twenty-two pounds. £28 £25 £22 £19 £16 ASKING PRICE, £ PER M² FINAL WINDOW Reserve £15 — the lot is withdrawn below this £26 £20 £17 £22 · today 14 days 9 days 5 days 2 days 0 DAYS UNTIL THE SITE MUST BE CLEAR
Illustrative ladder for the sample lot SLV‑0412. Steps, dates and reserve are chosen by the contractor when the lot is published, and are visible to buyers from the first day — nothing moves silently.
For the contractor
The site clears on programmeIf the lot does not sell by the reserve, it is withdrawn and you fall back to disposal — with three days still on the clock, not three hours.
For the buyer
A price you can plan aroundEvery step is published on day one. You can buy at £26 to be certain, or hold for £20 and accept that somebody else may take it.
For the material
A route that beats the skipThe ladder exists so the material finds a buyer inside the window it actually has, rather than the window a catalogue would like it to have.

Both sides of the lot

One marketplace, two entirely different jobs.

Contractors are not shopkeepers and architects are not scrap dealers. Salvagio gives each side the tool their actual day needs.

For demolition & strip-out contractors

Clear the site, and get paid for what you were going to pay to remove.

You are measured on programme, not on resale. Everything here is built so that listing a lot never becomes another thing that could delay the handover.

  • List from the phone in your pocket, on site, in about ten minutes
  • Free to list — commission only on a completed sale
  • One counterparty, not fifteen enquiries and twelve no-shows
  • Collection booked by Salvagio, into a slot you approve
  • Payment held in escrow and released when the lot leaves
  • Withdraw at any point before collection if the programme changes
Three days between the strip-out finishing and the site handover, with the collection slot inside that window. STRIP-OUT COLLECTION SLOT HANDOVER Day 0 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3
List a lot

For architects, builders, joiners & makers

See the material while it is still in the building.

The lot you want appears and disappears inside a week. Alerts exist so that you find out during that week rather than after it.

  • Follow categories — timber, brick, ironmongery, stone, doors, fittings
  • Set a radius so you only hear about what you could realistically collect
  • Condition grade and photographs of the actual lot, not a stock shot
  • Provenance on every lot: which building, which year, which use
  • Escrow, so you are not wiring money to a site number
  • A diverted-tonnage record you can put in a specification pack
Alert radius: lots inside a fifty kilometre circle around a practice, matched to followed categories. 25 km 50 km 80 km T B I Your practice Matched: timber, brick, ironmongery Outside radius or category: not alerted
Register as a buyer

What is in the platform

Seven things, each of which removes a reason to use the skip.

Ten-minute site listing

Photograph, quantity, condition grade, clearance date. Four screens on a phone, no desk, no account set-up before you begin.

Seller

Clearance-date pricing

A published price ladder that steps down as the deadline approaches, with a reserve the contractor sets and a withdrawal that is never a surprise.

Both sides

Category alerts by material and radius

Follow the materials you actually specify and the distance you would actually travel. No feed, no browsing, no notifications about a slate roof in another county.

Buyer

Collection arranged in-platform

Salvagio quotes the movement per lot, books the carrier, and hands the site an access brief. The contractor approves a slot; nobody negotiates a van.

Both sides

Escrow released on collection

The buyer pays Salvagio before a carrier is booked. The contractor is paid when the material leaves the site. Neither side is exposed to the other's paperwork.

Both sides

Diverted-tonnage record per transaction

Both sides receive Salvagio's own record of what left the site, what it weighed at collection, and where it went. Plain evidence, plainly described.

Both sides

Provenance on the record

Which building, which year it was built, what it was used for. Reclaimed material is worth more when you can say where it has been — and specifiers ask.

Buyer

One invoice, one counterparty

Commission, collection and payout resolve into a single statement per lot, so a finance team is not reconciling a marketplace against a haulier against a buyer.

Seller

Material categories

The material is the product. Everything else is admin.

Salvagio opens with the four categories that come out of commercial strip-outs in the largest, most sellable quantities — and where the gap between skip price and specification price is widest.

Material study: oak block parquet in herringbone, grain and joint lines visible.

Timber & parquet

Block and strip parquet, joists, floorboards, stud, panelling and worktops.

Typically 40–800 m² per lot

Material study: reclaimed stock brick laid in stretcher bond with varied firing colours.

Brick, block & stone

Hand-cleaned stock brick, engineering brick, coping, setts, slate and stone slab.

Typically 500–20,000 units per lot

Material study: brass ironmongery — a lever handle on a rose, an escutcheon and a butt hinge.

Ironmongery & fittings

Brass and bronze levers, hinges, closers, escutcheons, rails and signage.

Typically 0.2–3 t per lot

Material study: three solid-core door elevations — a four-panel door, a flush door with a vision panel, and a part-stripped flush door.

Doors & joinery

Solid-core and panelled doors, frames, architrave, shopfitting and fitted units.

Typically 10–200 units per lot

What a clearing lot looks like

These are illustrative lots built from the kind of material a commercial strip-out actually produces. Salvagio is not trading yet, so nothing below is a live listing — this is the format, not the inventory.

Material study: reclaimed stock brick in stretcher bond.
Brick Clears in 6 days

Hand-cleaned stock brick

SLV‑0418
Quantity
4,200 units
Condition
Cleaned, some frogs chipped
Origin
Warehouse, 1931
Est. mass
10.1 t

Price nowStep 1 of 3

£0.94/ brick

Steps to £0.82 in 2 days, then £0.70 on the final day.

Material study: three solid-core door elevations.
Doors Clears in 11 days

Solid-core doors, oak veneer

SLV‑0421
Quantity
58 units
Condition
Ironmongery still fitted
Origin
Office fit‑out, 2004
Est. mass
2.4 t

Price nowStep 1 of 4

£38/ door

Holds for 4 days, then steps to £32, £27, £22.

Material study: brass ironmongery, lever handle and hinge.
Ironmongery Clears in 2 days

Brass levers, hinges & closers

SLV‑0426
Quantity
1.1 t
Condition
Unpolished, sorted by type
Origin
Hotel refit, 1972
Est. mass
1.1 t

Price nowFinal step

£3,900/ lot£5,200

At reserve. Withdrawn and sent for disposal if unsold in 2 days.

Diversion record

Every lot leaves a paper trail worth having.

When a lot is collected, both sides get the same document: what the material was, how much of it there was, what it weighed on the carrier's ticket, where it came from and where it went.

Sustainability leads need diversion evidence and normally have to assemble it from waste transfer notes and guesswork. Architects want provenance for a specification pack. Contractors want something to show a client who asked what happened to the fit-out.

We are careful about what this document claims. It is Salvagio's own record of a transaction we arranged and a collection we booked. It is not a third-party-verified carbon assessment, and it does not carry an audited embodied-carbon figure — we would rather hand you a tonnage you can stand behind than a carbon number you cannot.

Mass from the carrier's ticket Origin building and year Issued to both parties
Sample diverted-tonnage record for lot SLV-0412 A single-page record issued by Salvagio. It names the material as reclaimed oak block parquet, quantity four hundred and twelve square metres, mass six point two tonnes recorded at collection, origin an office fit-out built in 1968, and destination a buyer's workshop. A footnote states that this is Salvagio's own record of the collection and is not third-party verified carbon accounting. Salvagio RECORD OF DIVERSION 6.2 tonnes diverted from disposal, and collected for reuse. LOT REFERENCE MATERIAL QUANTITY MASS AT COLLECTION ORIGIN DESTINATION COLLECTED CARRIER TICKET SLV-0412 Oak block parquet, reclaimed 412 m² 6.2 t Office fit-out, built 1968 Joinery workshop, buyer ref B-0771 26 Aug 2026 WT-88214 ISSUED BY Salvagio This is Salvagio’s own record of a collection we arranged. Mass is taken from the carrier’s weighbridge ticket. It is not a third-party-verified carbon assessment and carries no audited embodied-carbon figure.
Sample record. Figures are illustrative — Salvagio has issued no records yet, because no lot has yet been collected.

Commission

Free to list. Twelve per cent when it sells.

Salvagio only earns when the lot leaves the site, which is the only outcome either side cares about. There is no subscription, no listing fee and no charge for a lot that is withdrawn.

Seller — contractors

12% commission on completed sales

  • Free to list, with no cap on lots and no monthly fee.
  • Nothing charged on a withdrawal. If the lot does not clear its reserve, you owe nothing and fall back to disposal.
  • Commission is on the sale value only — never on the collection charge.
  • Paid on collection, from escrow, as a single netted statement per lot.
Worked example — lot SLV‑0412, sold at the third step
Sale value — 412 m² at £20/m²£8,240.00
Salvagio commission at 12%−£988.80
Collection — quoted per lot, paid by the buyer£480.00
Contractor receives on collection£7,251.20

Buyer — architects, builders, makers

£0 to register, follow categories and be alerted

  • You pay the listed lot price plus the quoted collection, and nothing else.
  • Collection is quoted before you commit — distance, access, floor level and whether a machine is needed.
  • Arrange your own haulage instead if you prefer; the lot price does not change.

Where the logistics margin sits

Where Salvagio books the carrier, the quoted collection charge carries a margin over what we pay the haulier. It is quoted as one number before you commit, and it is the second half of how the business makes money. We would rather say that plainly here than bury it in a schedule.

Commission and collection quoting are the two revenue lines. There are no listing fees, no featured placements and no paid ranking.

Where we actually are

Salvagio has not opened. Here is what it will count when it does.

There is a lot of confident reporting in this sector. We would rather start with an empty ledger that we publish honestly than a number nobody can trace, so these are the three figures the marketplace is built to measure — and they are all still at zero.

Tonnes diverted from landfill
0 tSummed from carrier weighbridge tickets on collected lots. No lot has been collected yet, so this figure is zero and will be updated from the transaction record, not from an estimate.
Lots cleared before their deadline
0 of 0The share of published lots collected on or before the contractor's clearance date. This is the number that tells us whether the clock model actually works.
Embodied carbon avoided
Not yet publishedWe will only publish this once we can show the method and the source factors alongside it. Until then we report mass, which we can evidence, rather than carbon, which we cannot.

Founding cohort — contractors

We are looking for a small number of demolition and strip-out firms in one metro area who will list real lots with us and tell us bluntly where the flow breaks. Zero commission on your first three completed lots.

Talk to us about listing

Founding cohort — buyers

Practices, builders and makers who will register their categories and radius before there is anything to look at, and be first alerted when there is. No fee, then or later.

Register your categories

One corridor first

Collection economics only work at density, so Salvagio opens in a single metro area and its surrounding radius rather than nationally. We will name the corridor when the cohort on both sides is full enough to trade.

No customer names, logos, testimonials or case studies appear on this site, because we do not have any yet. When we do, they will be named businesses describing lots we can point to on the record.

Questions we get asked

The practical objections, answered.

What if the material is not as described when the carrier arrives?

The escrow does not release until collection is confirmed. If the lot materially differs from its grade and photographs, the buyer can decline at the point of collection and the funds return. The contractor keeps the site clear either way, because the carrier is already there.

Condition grading is deliberately coarse — A, B or C with a one-line note — because a three-point scale that people use honestly is worth more than a ten-point scale nobody fills in.

Who lifts, wraps and loads the material?

The contractor makes the lot accessible at ground or loading level by the agreed slot; the collection quote covers the carrier's loading and transport. Where a lot needs stripping, palletising or a machine, that is priced into the collection quote and stated before either side commits.

Why would a contractor bother instead of calling the skip?

Because ten minutes of phone work can turn a disposal cost into a payment, without adding a single day to the programme. If it does not sell by the reserve, the lot is withdrawn with time still on the clock and the skip is called as normal. The downside is ten minutes; the upside is a five-figure lot on a large strip-out.

Is the price step-down an auction?

It is closer to a published Dutch ladder than an auction. There is no bidding against other buyers and no hidden reserve — the whole ladder and the reserve are visible from the moment the lot is listed. The first buyer to commit at the current step takes the lot.

Can I sell reclaimed material I have already stockpiled?

Yes, though the clock model is built for material still in a building with a clearance date attached. Yard stock can be listed with a longer window and a flatter ladder. Salvagio is not trying to replace a reclamation yard — it is trying to reach the material that never makes it to one.

Do you hold any sustainability accreditation?

No. We are not accredited under BREEAM, LEED, ISO or any other scheme, and we do not present the diversion record as though we were. The record states what was collected, what it weighed and where it went, and is issued by us. What a buyer or a sustainability lead does with that inside their own assessment is properly their call, not ours.

When does it open?

When we have enough contractors and enough buyers in one corridor that a listed lot has a genuine chance of selling inside its window. A marketplace that opens thin fails on its first cold listing, so we would rather start late with density than early without it. The founding cohort will be told the date before it is public.

Buildings come down

Materials do not have to.

If you are clearing a site, tell us what is in it. If you specify, build or make with reclaimed material, tell us what you look for and how far you would go for it.

List a lot Register as a buyer

Or write to hello@salvagioyard.com.