Palladium is used in several industrial applications and given its high intrinsic value, intense efforts are made to recover the element. In this hydrometallurgic perspective, ion-exchange technologies are principal means. Yet, without incorporating the chemical and physical properties of the Pd present in real, plant-specific conditions, the recovery cannot reach its technical nor economic optimum. This study characterized a relevant Pd-containing waste stream of a mirror manufacturer to provide input for a speciation model, predicting the Pd speciation as a function of pH and chloride concentration. Besides the administered neutral PdCl2 form, both positively and negatively charged [PdCln]2-n species occur depending on the chloride concentration in solution. Purolite C100 and Relite 2AS ion-exchange resins were selected and applied in combination with other treatment steps to optimize the Pd recovery. A combination of the cation and anion exchange resins was found successful to quantitatively recover Pd. Given the fact that Pd was also primarily associated with particles, lab-scale experiments focused on physical removal of the Pd-containing flow were conducted, which showed that particle-bound Pd can already be removed by physical pre-treatment prior to ion-exchange, while the ionic fraction remains fully susceptible to the ion-exchange mechanism.