Recovered Plastics Market Analysis Available

The Waste & Resources Action Programme has launched the third in its series of Market Situation Reports, which targets the scrap plastics market. The goal of the report is to provide recyclers, reprocessors and investors the data they need to plan their longer term business strategy.

The report, co-authored by Liz Dixon Smith and Peter Sainsbury, looks at detailed information on price fluctuation and a study of the challenges that the plastics industry faces. The report provides an in-depth analysis of the current state of the recovered plastics market in the United Kingdom, including sections on plastics consumption, plastics recovery and end markets for recovered plastics.

"The UK recovered plastics industry is facing interesting times. On one side, emerging technologies for closed-loop recycling, strong overseas demand and high virgin polymer prices have all led to rising prices for good quality recovered plastics. On the other, there is growing consumer pressure to be able to recycle more types of plastic in greater volume, and a lack of domestic capacity to process mixed and lower quality plastics. This new report gives a detailed analysis of all the factors affecting the sector so that businesses can make informed choices about the next stage of their development," said Smith.

The report also has a section that looks at the international virgin plastics market and its links to the recycled plastics industry. It explains how the prices for virgin and recovered plastics are related and explores the demand and supply interactions between the two sources of polymer.

"Prices for recovered and virgin plastics are more volatile than those for other recovered materials and this poses another challenge to the UK plastics recycling sector. Prices have risen sharply over the past few years, and although demand for good quality recovered plastics is expected to remain strong in the near future, if prices were to fall it could reduce the commercial incentives to invest in new reprocessing capacity.

"Our special report will help businesses to understand the influence that global markets can have so that they can build in safeguards when planning for the future. The aim is to make sure that the UK continues to have a healthy recovered plastic sector that is capable of competing on the world stage."

Interested parties can register to receive the reports on WRAP’s website at www.wrap.org.uk/marketreports.