New waste shipment regulation endangers European recovered paper

The EU’s newly revised Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR) poses a serious risk to Europe’s recovered paper industry beyond 2027, according to BIR paper division president Francisco Donoso.

He told the paper session at BIR’s recent convention in Copenhagen that granting of end-of-waste status would be pivotal when the WSR block flows of ‘waste’ paper to non-OECD countries. Donoso told delegates: ‘This is very serious. The WSR is a risk to our business as it restricts exports out of Europe.’

Destroyed

He warned that implementation of the new regulation had be pragmatic or the market in Europe would be destroyed by a massive surplus that could no longer be exported. Although end-of-waste status existed in some European countries, including Spain and Italy, universal adoption should be the objective.

He also urged major importers of the EU’s recovered paper, notably India and countries in Southeast Asia, to actively support efforts within Europe to establish end-of-waste as a solution to the export obstacles presented by the revised WSR.

Earlier, Fátima Aparicio of Repacar in Spain also lamented a lack of harmonisation. She explained how recovered paper and cardboard shed its waste status by satisfying certain criteria, including processing to accepted benchmarks such as quality standard EN 643.

Volatility

Other speakers gave an overview of the recovered paper market. Hannu Oskari Hara, trading desk manager at Norexeco – The Pulp and Paper Exchange, outlined how a commodity exchange could assist in the management of price risk exposure.

John Atehortua, regional trading manager for recovered paper at Cellmark in the Netherlands, highlighted extreme levels of volatility in the US market where prices had increased 150% on a year-on-year basis. In terms of demand pull, more policies were emerging to promote minimum recycled content in packaging, he said.

Simone Scaramuzzi, commercial director of LCI in Italy, surveyed the Asian paper recycling landscape and its main European suppliers, noting that recovered paper imports had surged to around seven million tonnes in 2023 on the back of particularly strong growth in India’s purchases.

New production capacities in Europe would create more competition from Asian mills to maintain their import quotas, he added.