Convincing companies to use less packaging, and ensuring that any packaging used goes on to be recycled, are two big priorities for governments looking to tackle ever-growing waste management issues. In the UK, a system was built to incentivize both.
Put simply, Packaging Recovery Notes (PRN) and Packaging Export Recovery Notes (PERN) are meant to ensure that the companies that create packaging waste are helping to financially support the cost of recycling that waste. However, navigating the opaque PRN market is anything but simple, as the prices of these notes are affected by a variety of external factors, and a lack of timely data hobbles companies trying to implement informed buying strategies.
How supply and demand works in the PRN market
Under the UK system, a PRN is created by a reprocessor or exporter that recovers and recycles 1 tonne of packaging waste, like plastic, paper, glass, or aluminum. Those PRNs are then sold to a compliance scheme, or to a broker sourcing them on behalf of companies which are obliged to purchase them.
The companies with the obligation to purchase PRNs (or PERNs, which are equivalent from the buyer’s side) are those that have put significant volumes of packaging onto the UK market – meaning companies who are either manufacturing their own packaged products within the UK or importing packaged products from abroad. The number of PRNs a company is obliged to buy is determined by just how much packaging a company was responsible for in the previous year; if a company sold a lot of products in plastic bottles last year, it will have to buy more plastic PRNs than a company which sold a smaller number.
So, at a basic level, the supply of PRNs will depend on how much waste is recycled by reprocessors and exporters, and the demand will depend on the obligations imposed by the government, something which is tied to how much packaging waste the producing companies obliged to buy PRNs have manufactured or imported into the UK.
External factors affecting PRN prices
However, as explained by Sandeep Attwal, Commercial Director of Envirovert, a PRN broker, there are a couple of external factors that will also influence the price of PRNs:
Demand for end products of recycling: Reprocessors are not, as a rule, holding extensive stock of their recycled products. Therefore, if the demand for recycled paper, plastic, or the like goes down – for instance, during an economic downturn when consumption is down generally – reprocessors will be making less of it, and in the process, taking in less recyclable waste. That will cause tightness in the supply of PRNs on the market. “This effect was seen, for example, when oil prices fell and virgin plastics became much cheaper than recycled plastics. Recyling slowed, and plastic PRN supply dropped,” she observes.
Conversely, legislation changes which drive up demand for recycled products – for example, the UK plastic packaging tax requiring 30% recycled content – “ creates a stronger market pull, which makes it more profitable for recyclers to operate at higher capacity,” explains Attwal. By incentivizing more production from reprocessors, such forces expand the supply of PRNs and drive down PRN prices.
Shipping costs: As Attwal notes, the UK relies very heavily on exporting certain categories of recyclable waste, like steel, aluminum, plastic, and paper. “If there are any issues with shipping, that will have a – generally short term – price spike,” she says.
Import restrictions or recycling closures: Similarly, if there are rumors about certain importing countries, like Türkiye, no longer taking in waste from abroad, that could cause concern among the market. “A lot of this market is traded on sentiment,” claims Attwal. In fact, the news need not be as dramatic as an entire country shutting its doors; murmurs about recycling operations closing can sometimes make producers nervous, she attests, causing more of them to come into the market.
Timing is everything
For those who are putting packaging on the market (and thus legally obliged to buy PRNs), there are requirements to submit data at two points in the year. By October 2025, for example, they would be obliged to report how much packaging was placed on the market in H1 of 2025; then by April 2026, they must report their full year data for 2025. The frequency and timing of these data submissions have several implications for the market:
Corrections or late responses: While the law requires the data to be submitted in October and April, Attwal sees a lot of producers either missing those deadlines or reporting numbers that they change significantly via corrections at a later date. So demand may go up or down as late submissions are received, or as errors are identified and data is resubmitted. In her experience, from the first point when obligations are published, demand “generally does increase by up to 10%” she states.
Indeed, Attwal suggests, the potential for major players to abuse this is certainly present, on both the supply and demand side. “Especially in the last four years, we have seen some big producers that have registered their obligations quite late in the year,” she notes. While there may be innocent reasons for this, there is also the possibility that companies are trying to hold off and buy their obligations when demand looks lower and the price is therefore cheaper. Meanwhile, on the processor side, monthly reporting is optional, but quarterly reporting is obligatory, so a processor who has transformed a large tonnage of material could potentially wait until the PRN price is expensive to declare that and cause the creation of the PRN.
“People like to have timely data on both sides to keep the market fair,” she says. Although a switch to mandatory monthly data is underway, she notes, this is unlikely to address these issues unless repercussions for non-compliance are imposed.
Structural time lag: The PRN obligations which determine demand are set based on the amount of packaging a company sold into the market last year, but the material that is being recycled to create the supply of PRNs is circulating this year. This matters because if an industry has moved on to lighter weight packaging, there is less material around to help meet the heavy obligations set by the previous year’s volumes.
“We have seen a couple of years where PRN prices have got really silly, really high, because the recycling target just wasn’t right for that year,” she says. She concludes, if governments just look at a snapshot of historical data to work their recycling targets out, and aren’t looking consulting with actors in the industry and looking at the direction of travel, this “is probably not the right thing to do.”
For those active in the PRN market, Expana benchmark pricing is available for PRNs in: plastic waste, steel waste, aluminum waste, glass waste, and glass waste re-melt. (customer access only)
Image source: Shutterstock
Written by Shannon Behary
