The website, prns.com, aims to provide packaging producers with an easy way to work out their recovery obligations under the UK packaging waste regulations.
 www.prns.com provides packaging companies with an obligation calculator |
Commenting on the new website, Daniel O'C;onnor, managing director of Mayer Environmental, said: “The site provides the best obligation calculator around. The system not only works out a company's overall obligation, but also gives a detailed breakdown of the different types of packaging recovery notes (PRNs) they'll need to buy.”
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Mr O'C;onnor explained that once companies had used the calculator, they would then be able to contact the prns.com team for a competitive quote on the PRNs they need. However, companies were not obliged to buy PRNs from prns.com if they used the calculator, he said. The hope is that the calculator will attract companies to the website, and that some of them would take advantage of the brokerage service on offer.
The new service comes as a number of new brokers and compliance schemes are entering the market looking to take advantage of the back-lash against the high administration fees of some of the more established compliance schemes. As PRNs continue to languish in the 3 to 7 price range in many of the materials, while obligated companies have been charged 20 and higher for those PRNs, organisations like www.prns.com are looking to fill the niche in the market for alternative options in compliance.
Mayer Environmental traded over 100,000 PRNs in 2002, with over half generated by its parent company, European Metal Recycling (EMR), the largest accredited issuer of steel packaging in the UK.
Graeme Carus, development director at EMR, said: “An over-supply of PRNs during the last 12 months has forced accredited reprocessors like EMR to work much harder to find buyers. The situation now looks set to reverse, with the anticipated increase in targets and the difficulties this will pose for obligated companies. In these volatile conditions, prns.com offers the means to build strong long-term relationships between obligated companies and reprocessors.”
The launch of prns.com comes just a few months after the launch of prnauctions.com, another alternative for reprocessors and obligated companies to trade PRNs. Run by API Trading, it followed the interactive PRN trading example of the Environment Exchange, the online PRN market now 40% owned by compliance scheme Valpak, with another 40% stake thought to be up for sale.
This year has also seen a number of new compliance schemes starting up, including Kite Environmental Solutions and Budget Pack, looking to pick up trade from the established compliance schemes by offering lower administration fees to obligated companies.
“Easy Jet” compliance
Stephen Clark, managing director at Budget Pack, a scheme run by Worktwice Environmental, told letsrecycle.com that some customers of Worktwice had been unhappy with the high administration fees being attached to PRNs by their compliance schemes, which was why Worktwice had decided to launch the new compliance scheme.
“We believe we can offer our customers compliance at 50% of the cost of some of the other compliance schemes,” Mr Clark said. “Some compliance schemes charge very high administration fees, and are really relying on their names as comfort blankets for their customers. We're a bit like Easy Jet – we'll give you a seat at the minimum cost.”
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