It was mostly a situation where the recycling market was ticking along this week, with one big exception.
The OCC market remains very strange, with the recent one-month ban on US exports to China, having a big impact that widened the price spread. More on this below.
For other materials, they keep on moving and mostly finding a home, helped by the PRN system that is helping to keep UK material viable.
Against the euro, the pound briefly jumped up above €1.14, but eased back down by the week end to be roughly in the same place at €1.13 as it was last Friday.
Shipping prices are stable too.
Arisings are reported to be tight across certain materials, but the bank holiday and good weather appears to have released some more packaging grades that should come into the mix over the next week or two.
Plastics
There wasn’t any change in prices this week, but material continued to move.
Demand for bottle grades seems to be improving slightly, with the good weather bringing more demand for PET in particular.
There appears to be a bit more high quality LDPE film on the market coming from retailers who benefitted from the bank holiday weekend and the weather.
Otherwise, the market is pretty stable at the moment.
The plastic PRN has eased slightly this week by a pound or so, following good monthly numbers from the National Packaging Waste Database that showed material was moving and targets look set to be bet. Clearly, the PRN over £60 is continuing to support UK material.
Paper
The spread between what buyers are prepared to pay for OCC has now widened to around £80. At the bottom of the market, there are some who are not that interested in buying who are offering £60 for the material.
There are others who are prepared to buy OCC of reasonable quality who are willing to pay £70 to £80 per tonne for it and these tend to be Indian, European and some UK mills.
Then a bit further up are those looking for better quality who are prepared to pay over £100 per tonne for this material. This includes some UK and European purchasers, plus Vietnam and an element to China.
And then there are the Chinese buyers looking for the very best quality and are prepared to pay a premium for it. This week they were buying at somewhere between £120 and £140 per tonne for a 95/5 grade.
It was also a reflection of Chinese mills looking to buy more UK and European material as a result of the one-month suspension of US exports to China.
The word in the market is that this is partly being seen as a retaliation in the ever-growing tariff war between US and China. But there is also a strong view that US recyclers and waste management companies have ignored the 0.5% quality threshold, and unless they get their act together soon, won’t have the quality for China.
It could be that this one-month ban becomes a longer-term situation, unless the US starts to meet China’s requirements.
Other paper grades were stable.
Metals
Copper increased in price by £100 per tonne on the back of an increase on the LME. Otherwise it was a quiet week on the metal markets with no real price changes.
Prices
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