It means councils, waste management companies and Novelis' other customers will be paid £600 per tonne for baled or densified and strapped cans delivered to its aggregation centres, while loose cans will be worth £550 per tonne.
The £75 increase directly reverses the £75 cut to its UBC price Novelis made in August 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story), and the company's commercial manager, Keith Guest, explained that the increase reflected wider price changes in the price of aluminium.
“It's just following the market prices, we have to keep up or we don't get the volumes in,” he told letsrecycle.com today (October 30).
Packaging
The price increase could provide a welcome boost for the UK's attempts to reach its aluminium packaging recycling targets for 2009 by increasing volumes of UBCs passing through the system.
Earlier this week, government figures revealed the UK appeared to be on track to meet its aluminium packaging recycling goals for this year (see letsrecycle.com story), but some concerns were raised that a sudden drop in prices – similar to that experienced in November 2008 – could dramatically change the situation.
Novelis operates the largest dedicated UBC recycling plant in Europe at its works at Latchford, near Warrington, with the capacity to recycle 130,000 tonnes of UBCs a year – more than the weight of all the aluminium drinks cans sold annually in the UK.
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