PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday,2 June 2009

BIR WorldRecycling Convention

25-27 May2009, Dubai

PressReleases on Commodity Sessions

PlasticsCommittee:

Atremendous future for plastics recycling

Markets may be “in turmoil”atpresent but “a tremendous future” awaits plastics recycling,Surendra Borad of Belgium-based Gemini Corporation NV has predicted.

The Chairman of BIR’sPlasticsCommittee told delegates at the meeting in Dubai that plastics scraphas weathered the global economic storm better than many othercommodities and better than had been feared at the time of theprevious BIR Convention last October.

Plastics scrap prices havebeenimproving - partly on the back of the stockholding capacity oftraders in Europe - and much of the negative sentiment of late lastyear now appears to have been “an over-reaction”, he said. Andthe business is “booming” in some developing countries such asIndia where a number of new sorting plants are coming on stream.

Mr Borad concluded hisopening addresswith the comment: “There is plenty of business for all of us - intrade, transfer of technology and joint ventures.”

Beginning a review ofcountry-specificmarket developments with India, the Committee’s Chairman noted thatits proposed pre-inspection controls on recovered paper and scrapmetal do not appear to extend to secondary plastics, although somecustoms clearance problems have occurred at the leading port of NhavaSheva. In the USA, meanwhile, prices of plastics scrap have beenimproving in recent weeks and container availability difficultieshave eased, according to Mr Borad. Australia too has witnessed“small” scrap price increases as well as good demand from Chinaas compared to other Asian countries; and from New Zealand, it wasreported that steady-to-strong demand has been fielded from tradersin Hong Kong.

Among the market summariespresented byother BIR Plastics Committee members, Jacques Musa of Veolia PropretéFrance Recycling lamented that French plastics recyclers havesustained a 50% drop in orders when compared to the correspondingperiod last year, with credit insurance companies adding to thesector’s problems by “reducing or cancelling” financial cover.The same speaker noted that Chinese buyers had made a strong returnto the market in late April.

Reporting on the Dutch andGermanmarkets, Peter Daalder of Daly Plastics in the Netherlandshighlighted the unpredictability of buyers in China, many of whomhave been jumping from one supplier to another. He also pointed to“rocketing” overseas sales prices which had almost tripledbetween November 2008 and April this year, adding that the exportmarket is now “over the top” and that a correction can beanticipated. According to Mr Daalder, plastics recyclers in Europeare operating at only 50% of their capacity.

The BIR PlasticsCommittee’s guestspeaker - Rajnish Sinha, General Manager of Horizon Technologies FZEof the United Arab Emirates - said that the Middle East is one of theworld’s largest consumers of plastics and yet “is not doingnearly enough to recycle plastic”. But, he underlined, “there isdefinitely a way forward”: for example, a number of major corporatebrands - including Coca-Cola and Marks & Spencer - are usingrecycled PET for a variety of packaging products.

Mr Sinha emphasised theenvironmentalpluses of recovering and reprocessing PET: recycling just one tonnesaves 5700kWh of electricity, 700 gallons of oil and more than 1.5tonnes in carbon dioxide emissions, he contended.

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