With this being the one week when all schools are closed for Easter, many market participants were taking the opportunity to have a week’s holiday.
As a result, the market was pretty quiet. Although the paper market saw continued buying from Chinese mill groups, plastics and metals were relatively stable due to quiet market conditions.
There will be some concern in the market that initial indications appear to show that the Easter weekend was a bit of a washout for retailers, with poor weather impacting on purchasing patterns. This would suggest that material volumes could well be low, at a time of the year when there is an expectation of a bit of an upturn.
In terms of foreign currencies, the pound was unchanged at $1.40 this week, and pretty much at €1.14 again as it was at the end of last week.
Plastics
Material is continuing to move, but there are some indications that things are slowing down into places such as Malaysia and Vietnam. This is partly due to these destinations filling up their yards, but also port delays are also occurring into increasingly busy Vietnamese ports.
European demand for bottle grades remains good, and this is helping to sustain current prices, and may even push them up a touch by the end of the month.
Low grade film continues to be a problem, but higher grades are finding a home into UK, European and South East Asian destinations at present.
Paper
The buyers of OCC for Chinese mills continued to drive the market this week, after entering back into it last week after import quotas had been issued. This helped to push up the price of OCC by another £4 per tonne on last week.
However, other destinations are not as keen on OCC, and Indian buyers are reported to be around £20 per tonne below the market price, as effectively they do not wish to buy right now.
Mixed paper is also seeing some increasing demand, and while source separated material was attracting a premium into Europe and South East Asia, there are reports that some European buyers (Germany in particular) are taking MRF sorted mixed paper at prices beyond £20 per tonne. However, most of the market remains in the region of £7-13 for mixed paper.
News & pam has also had more interest this week on the back of improving demand from UK mills, as well as export purchases.
Metal
Some aluminium grades for industrial uses saw a small price boost, but otherwise there wasn’t much change for metal grades this week.
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