Pfandkunde

11:08 Dec 27, 2011 

Thanks for everyone's input. I explained to my client that this was not something that was easy to translate into English and suggested that they either use a sentence rather than a simple word to explain what was meant or leave out the "Pfand" part completely and just use "customer."

15:43 Dec 19, 2011 

is strange as well. Never heard this befere. It has only 64 Google hits in German. No bilingual page found with "Pfandkunde". It always refers to the German bottle deposit system or the pallet deposit system.

14:54 Dec 19, 2011 

"Deposit customer" sounds a bit alien to me (although I have no direct knowledge of the details of such a business), so I was going to suggest "rental customer" if a rental was involved.

However, the pallets might be part of a pallet pooling scheme, so if there is uncertainty about whether pallet rental or pooling is involved it would probably be safest to go with "deposit customer".

14:13 Dec 19, 2011 

The text does not specify exactly how this works but generally I believe that these packaging companies lease/rent their products. In the case of this customer, he will definitely invoice the "Pfandkunde" for any layer-pads that are damaged / need to be recycled as this is mentioned in the text.

14:05 Dec 19, 2011 

"Pfandkunde" would normally be a customer that pays a refundable deposit, possibly a "deposit customer" (although that sounds alien to my ears).

But how can a manufacturer of pads make money by lending them out on deposit and then refunding the deposit upon return?

Is the manufacturer renting the pallets to the customer (i.e. rental payment + security deposit)?