The price of European rPET has reached its all-time high 

The concatenation of many factors, considering that the production plants of both rPET flakes and granules for food contact, are working at full capacity, now close to 100% of their production capacity prompted some customers to temporarily return to supplies of virgin raw material.

Furthermore, the price delta between recycled transparent polyethylene terephthalate grind, compared to virgin PET in Europe, has reached a record level, as material prices they continued to follow divergent paths, according to data from S&P Global Platts.

The delta between rPET clear flakes and virgin PET was calculated at Euro/Ton 210  on June 30th, the widest level since it was launched the monitoring of PET clear flakes in February 2008. The previous all-time high was Euro 160 / Ton on May 15, 2020.

While the prices of virgin PET in Europe decrease, reaching 1,190 Euro / Ton, down by 35 Euro / Ton week on week, realizing the level lower for 16 weeks, with the consequence of increasing stocks of virgin polymer, the demand and consequently the prices of rPET increase.

It would seem that the growing demand for ground and granular rPET for food contact remains, even for the beginning of this summer, well above the real production capacities.

Producers of recycled rPET expect an increase in the availability of bottles to be recycled only starting from October 2021, with the consequence of not being able to meet the huge demand of recycled material.

The prices of bales of post-consumer PET bottles reached 750 Euro / Ton FD NWE, an all-time high, in the wake of these supply problems of the product.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.