Glass
The glass sector has seen a relatively stable month despite ongoing strenuous conditions. The glass PRN has seen significant increases, with the remelt PRN way up. Some have chosen to hold their prices while others have seen minor increases or decreased, resulting in a very “mixed bag” month.
UK legislation such as Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR) and the forthcoming deposit return scheme (DRS) continue to have an effect on prices.
The UK also continues to see the import of cheap virgin cullet cause low demand for recycled glass.
Encirc has also confirmed an organisational restructuring process which has concerned glass reprocessors.
In this context, Letsrecycle has held its glass prices from the previous month.
View our more detailed glass price index here.
Metals
The metals market has seen a modest uplift overall in November, with most grades experiencing slight upward movement.
Aluminium can prices have continued to climb from last month, though momentum eased off in the past week amid a softening export landscape.
Steel can prices have been more changeable, with fluctuations reflecting increased volumes of materials entering the market. The repercussions of the recent liquidation of Unimetals Recycling are only just beginning to surface, continuing a sense of uncertainty as the sector adjusts to this loss of capacity.
Stainless steel scrap has faced further downward pressure, with reduce import volumes from Europe contributing to a more irregular environment.
View our more detailed metal price index here.
Organics
Organics prices have remained stable in November, with the market looking forward to the upcoming influx of food waste with the Simpler Recycling reforms coming in March 2026.
View our more detailed organics price index here.
Plastics
The plastics market remains challenging this month and in particular the market for PET, with continued lack of demand putting further downward pressure on prices. The issues in the market continue to be linked to cheap imports of virgin flake from countries including Indonesia, India and Malaysia. Meanwhile prices for HDPE have remained firm this month due to good demand for this grade.
During the start of the month, the PRN was providing important price support for all grades and it was expected the PRN price would continue to rise amid concerns that business may be shy of their 2025 target. However, in recent weeks and following the release of the Q3 packaging data which showed an increase in reprocessing and exporting and a much less tight market, the PRN has now dropped to around £200/tonne. This is a concern for the plastics market which is already struggling – in particular the PET market. It is expected that the reduced PRN will put downwards pressure on all grades going into December.
Elsewhere this month, the sector was disappointed by the lack of a meaningful increase in the Plastics Packaging Tax in this week’s Budget, which would have helped drive increased demand for recycled material.
View our more detailed paper price index here.
Textiles
The second-hand textiles sector continues to struggle amongst dwindling demand from overseas markets and surplus of low-quality textiles due to ultra-fast fashion.
Charity shop collections and textiles banks continue to see low pricing which has further decreased this month.
Some in the industry have warned that they may soon have to look at charging local authorities for collections from HWRCs due to the low grade of the textiles they are collecting.
View our more detailed textiles price index here.
Wood
There are still major issues in the wood sector due to stock and oversupply. A lot of plants are offline in the northwest and Scotland which is applying further pressure.
Most gate fees are currently very high, but most sites simply do not have space to take on further material. However, very few wood recyclers are operating on a spot-price basis and are only fulfilling their contractual obligations.
The southeast is in a slightly better situation as the Tilbury Green Power site is now online, but gate fees also remain relatively high here.
Some in the sector have said they are looking for options to export wood to Europe, but this is largely not in play yet.
The industry had previously thought that the situation might improve around October due to seasonal demand increases, due to an unexpected amount of downtime across the country. It is now looking likely that gate fees will remain high for the foreseeable future.
View our more detailed wood price index here.
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