Every year, fires, floods, cyclones, and road accidents damage goods worth crores of rupees. Metal coils bend and burn in factory fires. Paper gets soaked and ruined in floods. A fire at a rice mill can leave behind tonnes of grain. For years, most of this damaged material was simply thrown away as scrap or sent to landfills. A Chandigarh-based salvage management firm, Saalvage Maasterz, is working to change that – not by recycling the material itself, but by connecting it to buyers who can put it to use.
India’s push toward a circular economy is gathering pace. Union Environment Minister Shri Bhupender Yadav has said the country’s circular economy could reach a market value of $2 trillion and create close to 10 million jobs by 2050, as India shifts away from the traditional “take-make-dispose” model toward reuse and recovery. The country already generates around 62 million tonnes of waste annually, with plastic and other recoverable waste streams growing fast.
Within this shift sits a less-discussed but commercially important link: insurance salvage. When goods are damaged in an insured event, the insurer typically settles the claim and then auctions the damaged material. Much of that material is not waste at all; warped metal can be remelted, soaked paper can be repulped, and salvaged grain, plastics, and films can re-enter their respective supply chains. The challenge has always been connecting that salvaged material to the manufacturers, recyclers, and traders who can put it back to use.
That is the gap Saalvage Maasterz works to close. The firm, registered and empanelled with most major insurance companies in India, participates in salvage auctions for damaged goods and channels the recovered material metals, paper, plastics, tyres, films, grains, and more to traders, recyclers, and manufacturers who reuse it as raw material. The firm does not process or recycle the material itself; its role is that of an intermediary, sourcing salvage from insurers and redistributing it to end buyers at competitive prices.
Despite being founded only in 2024, the firm has built early momentum. Since its founding, Saalvage Maasterz has closed 98 salvage deals across a base of 83 buyers, and has redistributed more than 1,600 tonnes of recovered material, alongside lots measured in pieces, numbers, and square metres, back into the supply chain. The firm is led by a team with several years of prior experience in the salvage industry.
The economic logic behind salvage reuse is straightforward. Recovered material is often significantly cheaper than virgin raw material, which helps manufacturers, particularly cost-sensitive MSMEs, control input costs. At the same time, diverting usable material away from disposal reduces environmental burden, at a time when India’s landfills are under severe strain.
The firm describes its approach around three principles: reliable, resourceful, and realistic, and follows a structured process for each salvage deal, from analysing the case and issuing a detailed intimation sheet to facilitating physical inspection and supporting logistics once a deal is closed.
As regulatory frameworks such as Extended Producer Responsibility tighten and demand for recovered material rises across packaging, construction, and manufacturing, intermediaries that can efficiently route salvage back into industrial supply chains are likely to play a larger role in India’s circular economy.
About Saalvage Maasterz:
Saalvage Maasterz is a Chandigarh-based, ISO 9001:2015 certified salvage management firm founded in 2024 and operating across India. The firm specialises in acquiring salvage material from insurance auctions and redistributing it to traders, recyclers, and manufacturers. It does not recycle material itself but acts as an intermediary between insurers and end buyers.
