Interview
A conversation with Amcor’s director of Government relations and recycling, Mike Baxter
Our editor Samuel Jones met Mike at Packaging Innovations and Empack 2026 in Birmingham’s NEC, where they spoke about the event, and Samuel took the chance to make the most of Mike’s vast knowledge and experience of recycling, to find out how the industry in the UK is set to tackle PPWR.
W
ith Amcor, I think it’s very important that we are seen to be present at these events, supporting the industry, because
the industry is in a pretty dire state at the moment. So, with our big sustainability off er, I think you’ve got to be seen to be delivering. How have I found the show? It’s a bit diffi cult to judge because last year I was speaking a lot so I didn’t get much of a chance to look around. For me what is it? I meet a load of old mates that I haven’t seen for years, that’s the lovely thing about these shows in the industry though, is that it’s quite close to it when you get down here.
Yeah, we all go to, I certainly do, to government meetings and to the various trade meetings but they’re a bit more structured, so here I’m walking around and people are saying, “hello, Mike, how are you?” So that’s why, in fact, people have asked me, “why are you here?” I said, actually, it’s like a day’s holiday. Well, fi rst of all, obviously, because of our size, when I’m meeting colleagues, some of them are competitors, so I can’t talk to them. The bigger picture is what’s happening with the regulatory scenario, both in the UK and Europe, and Europe does matter because a lot of our customers are global brands. So, they’re supplying into the EU,
so they’re going to be impacted by the PPWR in the same way Northern Ireland is. All I want to say is, that I’ve been involved in discussions with various government departments, looking at the industry, the trade associations, for far too long and I don’t think I’ve ever seen things as diffi cult as they are now.
The recently published EU Winter Package will be a help to EU recyclers, the problems, is, there are not any similar measures in the UK where we’ve lost 400,000 tonnes of installed capacity in the last four years. The diffi culties UK plastics recyclers face are now being mirrored in Europe. The Commission, the Comm, understand that,
18
February 2026
www.convertermag.com
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
