A Direct Processor With Its Own Laboratory

TDA Midwest Corp has bought and processed end-of-life catalytic converters and secondary metals from Aurora, Illinois since 2018 — grading in front of the seller, and settling on measured content.

10+ Years Buying the Same Material

TDA Midwest Corp is a precious metals processor and a direct buyer, not a broker placing your material with someone else. Converters, circuit boards and secondary metals are bought, received and processed by the same company, at one facility in Aurora, Illinois, and analyzed in our own laboratory. That matters to a seller for one reason: there is no second margin between your load and the refinery, and nobody to point at when a number is questioned.

The business opened in 2018 buying converters from auto recyclers across the Midwest. It now runs scheduled collection routes through nine states and receives freight from across the country. The material changed over those years — diesel particulate filters first, then circuit boards and electronic scrap — but the method did not, and neither did the people running it.

We buy from registered businesses only. Every seller is verified before a first transaction, every load is documented with seller identification and origin records, and those records are retained. Converters are among the most frequently stolen auto parts in the United States, and a buyer who is careless about that becomes a liability to every legitimate supplier he deals with.

Four Things, in Writing

Every unit counted in front of you.

Direct loads are graded one at a time, and you see the count, the grades and the total before anything is signed.

Same-day payment on direct purchase.

Payment is issued the day your load is graded. Not same-week, and not on receipt of an invoice.

80% advanced on assay.

Released once the load is weighed and sampled, so you are not financing the analysis cycle.

Any grade reopened on request.

Question a call and we show you the comparison behind it — the part number, the grade it was matched to, and the rate that grade paid that day.

The Number Is Made Before the Analyzer Is Switched On

Any buyer can own an analyzer. What decides whether a reading means anything is everything that happens first — whether the material was decanned cleanly, milled fine enough, and homogenized until one scoop genuinely stands for a whole trailer. A careless sample on expensive equipment produces a confident, wrong number, and the seller has no way to know. This is the part of the process we built the facility around.

Preparation under one roof

Decanning, milling and homogenizing happen at our own facility, so sample quality is our responsibility and not a subcontractor’s.

Calibrated analysis

Prepared samples are run to known standards in our own laboratory, not read off an unprepared surface.

Samples retained

A portion of every lot is retained, so any settlement can be checked back to the material it came from.

Get a Price

Send a part number, a photo or a rough count by type. You will have a price back the same business day. We buy from registered businesses only — please include your company name when you get in touch.