Options continue to multiply for UK recycled plastics

With projected UK mixed plastics bottle recycling capacity put at 65,000t/year by May 2008, domestic reprocessors will have significant volumes of food-grade polymer on offer. But options are divided about how this will affect pricing.

Currently, brands such as GlaxoSmithKline's Ribena and Innocent have to source their post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics from mainland Europe. Amcor's Beaune site in France is a prime supplier of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), for instance.

But with the 30,000t/year Intercontinental Recycling plant in Lancashire open for business from this month, and the 35,000t/year Closed Loop London (CLL) site in Dagenham now due to open by May next year, retailers and brands are planning to source more of their rPET from the UK.

Around half the recyclable waste from Intercontinental's Skelmersdale plant will be reprocessed as rPET, the other half as extruded recycled high density polyethylene (rHDPE) "for critical applications"

CLL is expected to have food-grade HDPE recycling up and running by summer 2008. The company has announced an agreement to supply Nampak with 6,000t/year of material.

Regarding rPET pricing, general manager at Intercontinental Lee Clayton says: "In the coming months, I don't think there will be sufficient supply from UK recyclers to meet demand, and prices for all grades of rPET may exceed the price of virgin polymer." Auditable, quality-controlled UK-sourced PCR is likely to command a premium for food applications in particular, he suggests.

Paul Davidson, plastics technology manager at the Waste & Resources Action Programme, says: "rPET has to compete with virgin. If it does command a premium, you have to ask, will it be a substantial premium? And will that premium last?" As he says, any real forecasts would rely on far more detailed analysis, even allowing for the difficulty in establishing a single 'base' market price for virgin PET.

Davidson adds: "There's a shift going on in the market, with more packaging converters, especially in PET sheet, investing in their own vacuum extrusion equipment." This means that premium, non food-grade flake can be extruded as pellet for food applications by the converter.

Intercontinental says it is initially targeting non-food markets with rPET flake, but Clayton adds: "Once we've established those markets, it's highly likely that we will progress to food-grade PCR by investing in extrusion for PET pellet." The company plans to supply food and non-food markets with different grades.