So far this year there has been generally little price movement across all grades although there was a small fall in office (mid-) grades use by tissue-makers at the end of January.
Tissue grades
Tissue mills are seen as being relatively better stocked for the time of year than is usual and there has been some machine downtime which has slowed consumption of recovered material.
The price reduction remains in place for the mid-grades also because the finished product market is seeing a large amount of tissue available with supermarkets keeping the pressure on suppliers to maintain or reduce prices for tissue products. There is a continuing growth in private label material in the form of supermarket own brands and this is not helping the branded tissue product manufacturers.
Despite the pressure in the tissue market, competition remains tough among merchants for the mid-grade material which usually consists of office and printers’ waste. Increasingly there is a trend for some merchants to install equipment, such a baler, free of charge as part of a bid to secure longer-term work.
Export demand for mid-grades remains firm although Indian merchants can prefer US-sourced material, partly because there is more original fibre – the UK grades can contain more recycled material which means fibres are weaker.
Mixed paper
Mixed material remains the focus of much discussion over quality. Various proposals are emerging for quality assurance for commingled material with the Environmental Services Association seeking applicants for its own scheme which will cover materials recycling facilities in the UK.
Among MRF operators there is concern that councils still need to do more to ensure that residents do not contaminate recyclable collections with unwanted material including carrier bags and food waste.
With a recent prosecution of one export over commingled material, the waste management industry is keen to make every effort to attach a quality stamp to its material although there is still some disagreement over how exactly the scheme will work.
The recovered paper industry itself is now working with two mixed paper grades, hard and soft mixed. The soft-mixed grade generally has a higher percentage of newspapers and magazines and is accepted by China, assuming there is no contamination. The hard mixed grade is not one that attracts China which is adopting a stricter approach to material. Hard-mixed can contain more material from the domestic waste stream including grey card. The Indian market has taken this grade and still continues to do so and while mills were happy to sort out plastic material in the past, there is more pressure now to ensure the quality of hard-mixed.
Cardboard
There has been no change for several months in the UK priced paid for Old-KLS although mills are keeping a close eye on the export market. This is because a weaker than expected price for the packaging waste recovery note (PRN) means that broadly-speaking the export price for material for material has fallen.
Where the ex-works price was for example, 60 with a PRN of 10 and a real price of 50, the fall in the value of the PRN to about 8 means that the real export price is about 48. This is closer to the price by UK mills – 45 per tonne ex works – and any further PRN falls could tempt UK mills to edge their price down as they are facing high energy costs and any raw material price reductions would be welcome.
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