Jun 2 2005
‘There is a lot of evidence that our companies are ineffective at getting a fair price for our materials,’ BIR Paper Division President Dominique Maguin of Soulier in France told the latest meeting on Wednesday, 25th May. ‘We appear to be accepting this situation without challenging it.’ Even by calling its product ‘waste’ paper, the recycling industry was effectively ‘impoverishing its own trade’, he went on to say.
Among market reports from around the world, Divisional Vice-President Merja Helander of Paperinkerays Oy in Finland confirmed that a disagreement over holidays had led to an industrial dispute involving the Finnish Paper Workers’ Union and the forest industry. This was of ‘deep concern’ to collectors because mills were not accepting any further supplies.
David Symmers of IWPPA in the UK reported that his country had achieved record recovered paper exports of 2.587 million tonnes in 2004, including more than 720,000 tonnes dispatched to China. This performance was attributable, he said, to increased political pressure to recycle without a parallel upturn in domestic mill capacity. By contrast, Divisional Vice-President Hubert Neuhaus of Ludwig Melosch GmbH said Germany ‘seems to have reached a collection ceiling’ and yet some 1 million tonnes more recovered fibre would be required this year to satisfy new production capacity. As a result, he expected a decline in German exports to Asia.
Another Divisional Vice-President - Ranjit Baxi of UK-based J&H Sales International Ltd - indicated that China’s recovered paper imports during the first quarter of 2005 had reached 3.077 million tonnes, with the USA accounting for 42.8% of the total and the EU 28.5%. Japan was the other leading supplier with a market share of almost 18%. The speaker also contended that India’s annual imports of recovered fibre were currently around 1.5 million tonnes but that the figure was likely to rise to 2 million tonnes by 2010.
The report from the European Recovered Paper Association (ERPA), read by Igor Bilimoff of Soulier in France, confirmed outstanding issues between ERPA and the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) with regard to a document on ‘Responsible Sourcing’. Further meetings are scheduled for June in a bid to resolve these matters.
The first of two Paper Division guest speakers in Barcelona, Luis Del Molino of the Spanish paper recovery and recycling association Repacar highlighted recent efforts to increase selective collection of paper and board in his country’s urban areas: growth had averaged 10% over the last five years and the total volume collected in 2004 had exceeded 700,000 tonnes. The speaker also observed that a further 1.3 million tonnes of paper and board capacity would be introduced in Spain over the next three years.
The division’s second guest speaker in Barcelona was Darren Pillai, General Manager of Mama She’s Waste Recyclers in South Africa. His organisation employs more than 1000 full- and part-time workers in the recovery of plastics, cardboard, glass and used beverage containers, thereby enhancing their sense of dignity by involving them in ‘the green revolution’. As well as creating a cleaner environment, recycling also helped to reduce energy and water consumption, he said.
Source BIR - BIR is the international trade federation representing the world’s recycling industry, covering in particular ferrous and non-ferrous metals, paper and textiles.
http://www.bir.org