Used Steel Drums, Plastic Drums and IBC Tanks — We Sell and We Buy

Used Stock We Sell

Everything we sell second hand is reconditioned at our own yard before it leaves. The range is the same one we handle new:

• Used steel drums — open head, with a removable lid and clamp ring; and tight head, with a fixed top and bungs. Steel drums reaching us have typically held solvents, lubricants, paints and coatings, fuels or hazardous materials, and what was in them previously decides how they are prepared.
• Used plastic drums (HDPE), 30 to 220 litres — open top, and L-ring tight head. Typical previous contents are acids, alkalis, detergents, food concentrates and water. Also called plastic barrels; same item.
• Used IBC tanks, 1000 litre — an HDPE bottle inside a galvanised steel cage on a pallet base, with a discharge valve. See IBC tanks for the cage, valve and rebottling detail.

Second hand steel barrels and metal drums are repainted where the reconditioning inspection calls for it. Tell us the product going in, the litre size and the closure type you are after, and we will tell you what we have that fits it — and say so plainly where nothing we have does.

What "Used" Means Here — Washed, Reconditioned or Rebottled

"Used" covers more than one thing in this market, and the three are not interchangeable. We separate them plainly:

• Washed — the container is washed inside and out and dried. Nothing is replaced. We run washing as a collect-wash-return service on containers you already own and intend to keep using: they come to the yard and the same units come back to you.
• Reconditioned — washed, dried, surface prepared (steel shot blasted or washed depending on what it previously held; HDPE hot washed), inspected for dents, corrosion, thread damage, stress cracking and residual odour, leak tested, with bungs, gaskets, lids, clamp rings and caps replaced where they will not seal, steel repainted where required, then palletised and dispatched. That is what our second hand stock has been through.
• Rebottled — an IBC term: a new HDPE bottle fitted into your existing galvanised steel cage and pallet base.

The full sequence is set out on drum reconditioning. It is worth asking which of the three you are being quoted for, from us or from anyone else, because the three describe genuinely different amounts of work on the container.

We Buy Your Empty Steel Drums, Plastic Drums and IBC Tanks

If empties are accumulating on your site — after a production run, a site clearance, a project close-out, or just steadily month after month — we buy them and we collect them. We are a reconditioner with a yard rather than a broker: the containers come to us, and the people looking at them are the ones who will be doing the work on them.

How it runs:

• Send us what you have: container type (steel, HDPE, IBC), litre size, closure type, approximate count, and — this one matters most — what was previously in them.
• We come to you. Collection runs across all seven emirates.
• Containers are inspected at the yard at Al Sajaa, Yard No. 27, and sorted into what can be reconditioned and what cannot.

Photographs sent with the details help a great deal: a clear shot of the top of a drum, of the bungs or clamp ring, and of the cage and valve on an IBC tells us far more than a written description does. Email them to maslamtanksbarrels@gmail.com, or call +971 52 256 0462 and we will tell you what else we need to know.

What the Inspection Looks At

Whether a used container comes back into service is decided at inspection, container by container, at the yard — it cannot honestly be settled from a description or a photograph alone. What we can set out is exactly what that inspection covers, so you know what to look at before you set a pallet of empties aside:

• Dents — how far the steel body is deformed, and whether the deformation reaches the chime or the closure.
• Corrosion — how deep it has gone, and whether it is confined to the surface that shot blasting takes off.
• Thread damage — bungs, caps and gaskets are replaced as part of reconditioning where they will not seal; damage to the thread in the container itself is assessed separately.
• Stress cracking in HDPE — crazing around the L-ring, the handles or the base of a plastic drum.
• Residual odour — whether a smell survives washing, and what that says about what is left in the container.

Every reconditioned container is leak tested before it goes back out. On IBC tanks, a cage and pallet base can still be sound when the bottle is not, which is exactly the case rebottling exists for. Tell us the previous contents accurately — solvents, fuels and hazardous materials on the steel side, acids, alkalis and food concentrates on the HDPE side all change how a container is handled.

Delivery and Collection Coverage

Collection and delivery run across all seven emirates, in both directions — reconditioned stock out, your empties collected. The yard sits in Al Sajaa Industrial Area in Sharjah, opposite Al Asal Marble Yard, which puts the northern-emirates industrial belt close at hand.

That coverage takes in the industrial and free zone areas where steel drums, plastic drums and IBC tanks tend to accumulate:

• Sharjah — Al Sajaa, Industrial Areas 1 to 18, Hamriyah Free Zone, SAIF Zone.
• Dubai — Al Quoz, Jebel Ali and JAFZA, Dubai Investments Park, Ras Al Khor, Al Qusais.
• Ajman and Umm Al Quwain — Ajman Industrial 1 and 2, Ajman Free Zone, UAQ Free Trade Zone.
• Abu Dhabi — Mussafah, ICAD, KIZAD, and Ruwais for the oil and gas side.
• Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah — Al Ghail, Al Hamra, RAK Maritime City, Fujairah Free Zone and the port area.

If your site is not on that list, ask anyway — the seven-emirate coverage is the rule, and the areas above are simply where this kind of work tends to be. For collection-only jobs where you are keeping your own containers, see the washing service on the homepage: we collect, wash and return the same units to you.

Send Us the Details

Buying or selling, the same information gets you a useful answer instead of a back-and-forth: container type, litre size, closure type, quantity, previous contents, and your emirate.

• Phone: +971 52 256 0462 or +971 6 579 0593
• Email: maslamtanksbarrels@gmail.com — and the easiest way to send photographs of what you have.
• Yard: Al Sajaa Industrial Area, Opposite Al Asal Marble Yard, Yard No. 27, Sharjah. Hours listed as Monday to Sunday, 08:00 to 20:00.

You are welcome to come and look at stock in the yard before you commit to it, and to bring a container of your own along if you want it looked at. The yard is a working site, not a showroom — which is rather the point.

Frequently Asked Questions