Glass PRN prices rise in possible sign of a recovery

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Glass recyclers are keeping their fingers crossed that the recent rise in the PRN glass price is a sign of a market recovery, following an increase in trading price to £8-£10 per tonne.

Towards the end of 2010, glass PRN prices crashed and in November dropped to £2.00 a tonne. However, this level began to creep up just before Christmas, reaching its current levels.

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An industry insider said: “I’ve got everything crossed that prices stay at these levels. I don’t know why prices have begun to rise though. There isn’t a shortage of glass in the market at the moment because of all the bottles we get in following the Christmas period, our glass collections can go up by more than 100% at this time of the year.”

Recresco director Tim Gent could not pinpoint the reason for the price change. He commented: “It’s a strange thing but it looks like it may have recovered to a degree because it has risen so much. These are prices for 2011 PRNs and are about where we expect them to be but we don’t know how long they will hold up. It is a fairly good PRN price at the moment but the market is very volatile and there is the potential for it to drop at any moment.”

PRN trading platform Scrap-Ex director of markets Gareth Goodall explained that it shows the PRN prices can go up as well as down. He added: “It’s a traded market and prices reflect the supply demand balance. At the moment it just shows there are more buyers than sellers out there for the 2010 vintage, which is around the £12-14 mark. On our forward markets we have selling interest around the £12 mark for glass PRNs so the 2010 market is pretty flat to that, which I suppose makes sense.”