High Court verdict next week in latest round of PRN battle

The five were: steelmakers Corus and ASW, packaging compliance scheme Valpak, the Environment Agency and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. They told Judge Fordham that a decision he made last month on interim relief should be overturned. No verdict was given today on this point and an announcement by the judge could come next week.

The story started on September 8, after a two-day hearing into who should be allowed to issue PRNs – packaging waste recovery notes – with Mr Fordham ruling that the matter should go to the European Court of Justice.

At that hearing Mayer Parry Recycling argued that it should be allowed to issue PRNs whereas the government took a different view. It considered that the steelmaker is the real recycler/reprocessor of used steel cans rather than Mayer Parry which prepares them for the furnace.

However, Mr Fordham decided that the complexities of the issue meant it should be referred to Europe.

The case is important to recyclers in the UK because PRNs have a cash value and are the evidence used in the packaging waste system. If Mayer Parry was allowed to issue PRNs then, for example, glass recyclers and cardboard recyclers would also be able to issue PRNs.

At the September 8 hearing the judge decided that on a prima facie level the balance tipped in favour of Mayer Parry. So, he ordered that the money for the PRNs which Corus and other steelmakers were able to issue for the steel cans supplied to them by Mayer Parry should effectively be put into a holding account and the money should not be touched.

Today the five told the judge that there should be no interim relief. They argued that the PRN money was being properly spent and no-one was “sitting on a pot of gold”.