Helping you choose a shredder.

Use this handy guide to help you make the right choice of shredder for your specific needs. Asking yourself these questions will help to ensure that the machine you purchase best suits your requirements. Make sure you take into consideration all the aspects shown. For example, you may have 5 - 10 users of the shredder, which would normally require a departmental machine, but they are all heavy users and the total number of uses per day is around 100 in which case you should opt for a heavy-duty machine.

Alternatively of course, you can call one of our advisers on 0844 8009928 for assistance.

How would you best describe your daily usage?

Light Duty -10-20 uses per day, a home office or SOHO (small office home office) machine should be adequate for your needs.

Medium Duty - 25 - 50 uses per day, a departmental shredder would be best suited to your needs.

Heavy Duty - 50 - 100 uses per day, a heavy-duty machine is strongly recommended for this number of uses.

How many people may use the shredder?

1-5 Users - a home office or small office home office machine should be adequate for your needs.

5 - 10 Users - a departmental shredder would be best suited to your needs.

10+ Users - a heavy-duty machine is strongly recommended for this number of users.

How sensitive or confidential is your waste?

There are two types of cut available from our range of shredders: strip cut or cross cut. The more confidential your waste the smaller the pieces it should be cut in to. If security is important to you opt for the narrower strip cut sizes or better still a cross cut machine. If your material is of a top-secret nature then go for one of our High Security machines. More guidance on this topic can be found on our SECURITY LEVELS page.

Will you need to destroy CD's, DVD's or Floppy Disks?

If so, you should consider one of the machines in our MULTIMEDIA section.

How much waste capacity do you need?

If you are a medium or heavy-duty user you should especially bear in mind the bin capacity of your shredder. The bigger the capacity, the less often it will need emptying. Remember in particular that strip cut waste takes up typically three times more space than cross cut, so if you don't want to have to empty your machine frequently go for the biggest bin possible and opt for cross cut if you can.

What width of paper do you need to shred?

All the shredders in our site will cope with A4 paper, but if you need to shred A3 paper on a frequent basis or perhaps you produce print outs on wide format computer paper that need shredding, then you should look for a machine with a minimum feed width of 300mm.