At least four companies are thought to be importing material from the Continent where collections attract far heavier subsidies than exist in the UK.
Typically the current UK market rate for HDPE bottles is around the 110-120 level including about 40 for the PRN (the packaging waste recovery note).
Other companies say that because of the high costs of bottle material in the UK they are using post production offcuts and some cheaper raw product from abroad in an effort to balance the books.
Andrew Simmons, business manager for the bottle recycling organisation Recoup, said he was aware that bottles were being imported into the UK and that this could cause problems for UK collections.
“The economic sense of this is that packaging compliance schemes in the UK will have to compete with whatever the European subsidies are”.
Figures for the export and import of bottles are not published as such although it is estimated as much as 10,000 tonnes of bottles could be coming into the UK, while about 30-50,000 tonnes of bottles and film are being exported to China for sorting by hand and reprocessing there. PRNs can be issued for this exported material.
Mr Simmons said that there was an urgent need for quarterly reporting of PRN figures which would help ensure there was a firmer value for the plastic PRN. The likely scenario, he said, is that prices could rise at the end of the year. However, the extra money might not go towards the bottles market but rather to the industrial and commercial sector where it is easier to collect.
Derrick Clark of Delleve Plastics said that he believed “the whole PRN system is failing in what is meant to help achieve”.
He added that the company had had to take one of its production lines using reyclced material out of use.
Bottles seminar
Next week, on Thursday March 8, Recoup will be holding a plastics recycling and seminar tour in Stratford-upon-Avon. The day will see a number of seminars including a look at how to handle and separate collected plastics and at local authority schemes.
For full details email:
Recoup conferences
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