Local authority recycling officers have been reminded of the ongoing difficulties in the paper recycling market because of less material going to China.
And, they have also heard that a DRS (deposit return scheme) could jeopardise the future of MRFs, materials recycling facilities.
The information came last Thursday in the China and paper recycling update at the Markets session of the LARAC conference in Nottingham, which was given this year by Robbie Warden, national sourcing manager for UPM, which has a newsprint mill in north Wales and other mills in Europe. The plant at Shotton, north Wales needs 360,000 tonnes of paper per annum, said Mr Warden and UPM also takes in 200,000 tonnes of material for sorting at its own materials recycling facility adjacent to the mill.
Robbie Warden, national sourcing manager for UPM, speaking at the LARAC conference
He pointed conference delegates to the importance of the export markets, with eight million tonnes of paper and card collected for recycling in the UK. “Three million tonnes of this is used in the UK and five million tonnes exported, which has been mainly 3.6 million tonnes going to China but this is now changing.”
Contrast
Emphasising how the export market is very important to the UK, he noted that Europe in contrast exports just 10% of its tonnage of paper and card collected, “five million tonnes out of 50 million tonnes of paper collected” so much less is exported overall and from individual countries.
There have been strong signs from China that it may not even take in high quality cardboard, office paper and unused newspapers for its mills from 2020 and Mr Warden described this as “a concerning thing”.
He continued: “We might get some insight of the difficulties this would pose shortly. The Chinese mills are waiting on licences for next year and so shipping lines may not take material from the end of this month until January. There may be a blackout period which will cause us problems and currently we are seeing high prices, particularly for pre-consumer material in the UK as the Chinese mills buy before the end of the month. They are struggling and having to pay through the nose for material”.
Impact
Should shipments to China stop at the end of the month, it is expected within the waste paper sector to have a knock-on impact on other grades, such as mixed paper. And looking to 2020, Mr Warden posed the question that if it is banned, “Where will it go? India does not have the capacity of China and it is a similar story for Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, Japan and other countries. They are all getting full and not wanting material even if it meets the EN643 standard.”
Part of the newsprint process at the UPM mill at Shotton in North Wales
Recent reports about the waste paper and pulp market have suggested that Chinese mills are looking to develop facilities overseas, from building mills in Vietnam through to developing their own plants in the UK, Europe and America (see letsrecycle.com story). Earlier this month the Department for International Trade confirmed Chinese interest (see letsrecycle.com story)
While not detailing any specific overseas interest in the UK, Mr Warden told the local authority recycling officers that “in the domestic market we have this structural imbalance, there is an opportunity I feel and you have to think why do we not have more production in the UK.”
He added that while the newsprint sector continues to be under pressure, with 10% reductions in readership this year, “so this is a tough market but the flipside is that the packaging sector is growing and tissue also with an ageing population”.
DRS
Referencing DRS, he said that “if DRS is a huge success and value is taken out of the household waste stream, it will be great for the quality of recycling but will effectively kill the MRF market.
“For the future, the only certain one is that the quality of paper for recycling is essential. Poor quality will feed incineration plants but there are opportunities for paper in single use with the demise of single use plastics and how we handle those products with laminates on them.”
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Source: letsrecycle.com Packaging
