UK meets 2008 recovery targets as Valpak lauds PRN system

Data published by the Environment Agency on 11 March showed that the UK firms have met the business recovery targets for 2008 and more than 250,000 tonnes of PRNs have been carried through to this year, with some companies still to report.

The EA data showed that some 1.6m tonnes of packaging was recovered or exported in the final three months of the year, broadly in line with the rest of the year.

Duncan Simpson, Valpak marketing director, told Packaging News: “There’s no doubt there were severe demand and price problems towards the end of the year, but the PRN system did what it was supposed to do and inject cash to ensure materials are being recovered.”

He added more paper and plastic PRNs had been carried over than expected, which could be down to “people sitting on material and waiting for subsidies to move the material this year”.

Simpson defended PRN price increases “to get over the hump” of declining demand from construction, but said that prices “were starting to soften”.

“We’re more confident about the market than we were at the back end of 2008, but it would be naïve not to recognise there are still serious circumstances going on in the world economy,” he added.

For the full Environment Agency data on PRNs, click here.

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