At a recent plastics recycling conference in North America, traders and exporters of waste plastics focused on finding importers of waste plastics that could replace China, improving the quality of their products, and changing the way companies operate after the ban .
Although many exporters said they are still waiting to see whether China's import policy on waste plastics has changed and then adjusted its own mode of operation, other exporters, including the largest scrap collectors, have started to wait and see if China will last for now Policy and read it forward.
Brent Bell, head of recycling at Waste Management, believes that no change will be made to China on the ban, and that the business is now being implemented on the basis of a ban on obsolescence.If it is a ban on the import of waste plastics, we must look for alternative markets , If it is allowed to import waste plastic, we must meet its import standards.
Recycling industry leaders Fosimpe S. L. and Newport CH International held extensive discussions on the future of the plastic recycling market during the conference and shared their perspectives.
Hamilton Wen, Plastics Director, Newport CH International
Hamilton Wen, head of Plastics at Newport CH International, believes that the export of waste plastics will disappear. This is just a matter of time. We do not know if it will be one, two or five years.
Newport CH International, like many exporters, has undergone tremendous operational changes since the ban, with China an ideal destination for waste plastics imports over the past two decades, offering both affordable prices and stable demand, and now Newport CH International is constantly looking for such new markets around the world.Wen said: "We have never looked for a place before, but now we have to go to find processors and end users.This is almost the entire business of our plastic traders completely Change. '
Wen believes that there are not enough end-users to deal with waste plastics on the market. The market demands high-quality waste plastics. Before the ban, the market is determined by the seller. The low-end waste plastics market will develop, although they It takes time to develop. Based on their development of new markets, the demand for these intractable waste plastics has picked up and is currently undergoing further development.
Now more questions are what kind of price the supplier is willing to accept, and companies have to decide whether it is economically important to deal with low-end waste plastics.A large scale competition has taken place in Southeast Asia after the ban was issued in the fall of 2017. Different Industry participants are trying to do business in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, etc. The influx of a large amount of waste plastic into the Southeast Asian market, the data show that in 2017 the increase in Southeast Asian imports 300% to 400%, such a market is very fragile.
Moreover, the transfer of goods may also cause new troubles.China already has many years of inspection protocols and laws on waste imports, and is still discovering the main problems with its imported waste.Many Southeast Asian countries do not have the same import agreement and people can do whatever they want Importing the goods they need is a huge problem for Southeast Asian countries and they are not really prepared, and it is only a matter of time before Southeast Asian countries adopt similar steps to China.
Pablo Leon, Asian manager at Fosimpe S. L.
Pablo Leon, Asia manager at Fosimpe SL, said that the ports around Southeast Asia are very crowded: Malaysian goods, which used to be cleared in only a week, now require more than two weeks, a situation similar to that in Vietnam and Thailand, Mentioned the lack of quality standards for the import and export of waste plastics, the industry eventually had to be standardized.
Leon said China's economy is highly dependent on exports of finished products, making it difficult for China to collect all domestically produced recyclables, even if China collects everything it produces, not enough to meet the manufacturing needs of raw materials.
Leon spoke of pollution thresholds set by China for non-banned materials, and most of the recyclables still imported from March will be subject to a limit of 0.5% of pollutants. "Leon said standards should be more adapted to each For example, PET recycled for fiber production is very different from LDPE for HDPE or blown films used in pipe production, but the new standard treats them as the same material .
Editor's note: After the ban, the global waste plastics market has undergone profound changes, before the stable relationship between supply and demand fracture, new market relations are being established.