INDUSTRY NEWSSKIPS
WRA: "Waste wood sector faces lengthy road ahead to recovery"
RECOVERING from COVID-19 is going to be a long journey for businesses involved in the waste wood sector, delegates attending the Wood Recyclers’ Association summer meeting were told at the start of June.
Industry experts predict the fallout of the immediate decline in waste wood raw material when lockdown was announced in March, combined with an already tight marketplace for the UK’s waste wood requirements, will definitely affect the sector for the next 12 months and could have a longer term impact for two to three years ahead.
Vicki Hughes of Enva Wood Recycling, Mark Hayton of panel board specialists Egger UK and Richard Coulson from energy supplier RWE all gave their views and predictions on the market place post COVID at a webinar organised by the Wood Recyclers’ Association (WRA) in conjunction with CIWM, on Wednesday, 3 June.
Members of the WRA also heard from Lauma Kazuša of Suez Trading Europe, who said every country in Europe had faired differently depending on when they went into and were coming out of lockdown, and the measures they had put in place during it.
Waste wood
The webinar heard that within 10 days of lockdown on 23 March, there had been an 80-90% reduction in inbound waste wood onto recyclers’ sites in the UK, with many recyclers taking advantage of the Furlough scheme to support their businesses. However, things were improving now with the majority seeing feedstock levels returning to 50% or more.
The lift for wood recyclers began slowly at the beginning of May when HWRCs began reopening. A poll taken during the webinar on Wednesday showed HWRCs are a major supplier of waste wood, with 82% of recyclers receiving wood from this source. Even though this has improved supply, heavy restrictions and some HWRC sites not segregating waste wood is still significantly affecting volumes coming through.
Panel board
Mark Hayton said the impact of Covid on the panel board industry was the biggest in its history, with order books collapsing overnight. The mixture of housebuilding output in March being 6.4% lower than in February and 10.8% lower than in 2019, together with retail sales of construction products falling by a record 18.1% has
had a massive impact on panel board requirements.
All UK plants started a progressive shut down in April, resulting in a huge number of staff being furloughed.
Biomass
Richard Coulson, Deputy Chair of the WRA, said COVID had resulted in normal contractual supply to biomass plants being 60% lower at the start of April than usual, although there were big variations between suppliers and some were significantly lower.
He said some plants had cancelled planned outages due to European specialists being unable to travel and instead ran at a reduced load. Others who were short of fuel had been forced to switch off, and some had managed to change the fuel mix and imported both virgin and waste wood.
“The next 12 months are critical,” said Richard. “If there is a second peak of COVID-19 or a recession, the reduced economic activity could result in the impact on our sector being felt for another two years or more.”
7
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
