Market evolution: Other plastic scrap (CN 391590) — 2015–2025

Introduction

This report examines the evolution of EU trade in Waste, parings and scrap of plastics (CN 391590) — a residual heading covering plastic scrap excluding polymers of ethylene, styrene, and vinyl chloride. It bundles waste streams from propylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and a wide range of other polymer types.

Over the 2015–2025 period, this market underwent a structural transformation. The EU was a dominant net exporter in 2015, shipping over one million tonnes annually — predominantly to mainland China and Hong Kong. By 2025, total export volumes had halved and the trade balance had flipped to a deficit. This report identifies and explains the three principal dynamics driving this shift: the collapse of traditional East Asian demand, the reversal of the EU's net trade position, and the geographic and structural reconfiguration of trade flows.

1. The End of the China Era: The Collapse of East Asian Demand and EU Export Decline

1.1 Exports fell by nearly two-thirds in value and over half in volume

Between 2015 and 2025, EU exports of CN 391590 plastic scrap declined from €328.9 million (1,071,273 tonnes) to €117.0 million (483,629 tonnes) — a drop of 64.4% in value and 54.9% in quantity. Average unit export prices also declined, falling from €307/t to €242/t (−21.2%), indicating that the EU not only shipped less material, but received less per tonne for what it did sell abroad.

1.2 China and Hong Kong went from absorbing 73% of exports to near zero

The single most consequential dynamic was the virtual disappearance of China and Hong Kong as export destinations. In 2015, Hong Kong alone imported €129.3 million and China €112.0 million worth of EU plastic scrap, together accounting for 73.4% of total EU export value. By 2025, Hong Kong's imports had fallen to €183,086 (−99.9%) and China's to €219,368 (−99.8%). The two markets effectively ceased to exist as outlets for EU plastic waste.

This collapse directly reflects China's National Sword policy, progressively implemented from 2017–2018, which banned or severely restricted imports of most categories of plastic waste. Hong Kong, which historically served as a major transit and re-export hub for scrap destined for mainland China, was equally affected.

1.3 Major EU member states bore the heaviest burden

The contraction of exports was felt unevenly across EU member states. The largest absolute declines were concentrated in the historically dominant exporting nations:

Source: Top reporters by value

France's exports collapsed by 97.3%, from €35.4 million to under €1 million, while Germany lost three-quarters of its export value. Ireland is the notable exception, having expanded its export business more than threefold — likely reflecting the development of new routing and processing arrangements that bypassed the former China-centric model.

1.4 Price shocks marked the transition, particularly in the China corridor

The volatility data reveals that the China and Hong Kong trade corridors exhibited the highest coefficients of variation (1.64 and 1.33, respectively), reflecting extreme instability during the transition period. A sharp export price shock was detected in the China corridor in 2021, with unit values surging by 143.8% — likely an artefact of residual, small-volume shipments at atypical prices during the final phase of the trade collapse.

2. The Reversal of the EU's Trade Position: From Net Exporter to Net Importer

2.1 The trade balance swung from a €232 million surplus to a €13 million deficit

Perhaps the most structurally significant development over this period was the complete reversal of the EU's trade position. In 2015, the EU enjoyed a trade surplus of €232.2 million in CN 391590 scrap. By 2025, this had turned into a deficit of €13.1 million. At its widest, the deficit reached €72.2 million, indicating that the EU became a structurally significant net importer of this material at some point during the period.

This transformation was driven by two simultaneous forces: the collapse of exports (as described in Section 1) and the growth of imports. Import values rose from €96.6 million to €130.1 million (+34.6%) while volumes remained broadly stable (489,724 t to 494,507 t, +1.0%). The key driver of rising import values was a sharp increase in unit prices, from €197/t to €263/t (+33.3%).

2.2 The United Kingdom became the EU's dominant import source

The partner-level import data reveals a pronounced reorientation of the EU's inbound supply base, with the United Kingdom emerging as the single most important source:

Source: Top partners by value

The United Kingdom's share of EU imports nearly doubled, reaching €64.2 million — or 49.3% of all CN 391590 imports by value in 2025. Post-Brexit regulatory divergence, including differences in domestic recycling infrastructure and waste shipment rules, likely contributed to the redirection of UK plastic scrap toward EU processing capacity. Meanwhile, imports from Norway and Switzerland — historically significant suppliers — declined by roughly half.

2.3 Import prices rose while export prices fell, deteriorating the EU's terms of trade

The price dynamics over the period are unfavourable from the EU's perspective. Export unit values fell from €307/t to €242/t (−21.2%), while import unit values rose from €197/t to €263/t (+33.3%). In 2015, the EU sold scrap abroad at a premium of €110/t over its import price; by 2025, import prices exceeded export prices by €21/t.

Import prices reached a peak of €457.5/t at some point during the period — nearly double the 2015 level — likely reflecting the global commodity price surge of 2021–2022. A pronounced import price shock from Norway was detected in 2018, with a 62.1% price shift and an abnormality score of 202.3.

On the EU member-state side, Spain emerged as the fastest-growing importer, surging from €5.0 million to €21.1 million (+326.6%), while Italy also more than doubled its inbound flows to €14.7 million. This suggests that processing and recycling capacity in Southern Europe has expanded to absorb material that previously flowed to Asia.

3. Market Restructuring: New Trade Corridors, Shifting Concentration, and Product-Segment Insights

3.1 Türkiye, Malaysia, and Vietnam filled part of the gap left by China

While EU exports in aggregate declined sharply, new destination markets grew in relative and absolute importance. The top export partners data shows a clear geographic reorientation from East Asia toward Southeast Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and intra-European destinations:

Source: Top partners by value

Türkiye (+295.4%) and Malaysia (+260.5%) emerged as the fastest-growing outlets. Both countries have developed plastic recycling industries that process imported scrap into recycled pellets and products. However, the combined value shipped to these new markets (€85.7 million in 2025 across all five partners above) falls far short of the €241.3 million that China and Hong Kong absorbed in 2015 — explaining why total exports remain depressed despite geographic diversification.

3.2 Export markets diversified while import sources became more concentrated

A striking feature of this period is the divergent evolution of trade concentration. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for exports fell from 2,799 to 1,435 (−48.7%), while the HHI for imports rose from 1,617 to 2,590 (+60.1%).

Source: Concentration data

In 2015, export concentration was very high because two destinations (China and Hong Kong) dominated. Their removal paradoxically made the export market more diversified, even as it shrank. On the import side, the growing dominance of the United Kingdom — accounting for nearly half of all import value — has made the EU's inbound supply base more concentrated and potentially more vulnerable to disruptions in a single bilateral corridor.

The specialisation data for 2025 shows that smaller EU economies — Malta (RSCA: 0.82), Cyprus (0.67), and Greece (0.52) — are the most specialised exporters of this product, while the largest economies (Germany, Spain, Ireland) show negative specialisation, meaning plastic scrap is a minor share of their total export basket.

3.3 Product segment data reveals the internal composition of the 2024–2025 trade

Detailed sub-product reporting for CN 391590 became available only from 2024 for two of the three bundled headings. The product breakdown allows a snapshot of the market's internal structure in the most recent two years:

Exports (2025):

Imports (2025):

Source: Product segment breakdown

Several observations stand out:

• Propylene (PP) scrap (39159011) is the only sub-product with a full time series from 2015. Its exports remained relatively stable (149,169 t in 2015 vs. 171,365 t in 2025), suggesting that the export decline concentrated in other polymer types. Imports of PP scrap more than doubled from 34,933 t to 80,727 t.
• "Other plastics" scrap (39159070) is the largest category by volume on both sides — 211,700 t exported and 288,995 t imported in 2025 — but its import price (€146/t) is the lowest of all three segments, suggesting lower-grade or mixed-material streams.
• PET scrap (39159020) commands the highest import price (€478/t), reflecting the strong demand for recycled PET in the EU driven by regulatory mandates on recycled content in packaging. However, the EU imported 124,783 t of PET scrap while exporting only 100,563 t, suggesting that domestic PET collection does not yet meet recycling demand.

Conclusion

The EU's market for CN 391590 plastic scrap has undergone a profound structural transformation between 2015 and 2025. The withdrawal of China from the global plastic waste import market — the single most disruptive event in this period — erased €241 million in annual export demand and forced a complete reconfiguration of trade flows.

The consequences are threefold. First, the EU's exports have declined by nearly two-thirds in value, and the new markets in Türkiye, Malaysia, and Vietnam, while growing rapidly, have only partially compensated for the loss of China and Hong Kong. Second, the EU has shifted from being a net exporter with a €232 million surplus to a net importer with a small deficit, as inbound shipments — now dominated by the United Kingdom — have grown while exports contracted. Third, the market has become structurally more complex: export destinations are more diversified than in the China-dominated era, but import sources are increasingly concentrated in a single bilateral corridor, and the EU's terms of trade have deteriorated significantly.

The emergence of PET scrap as a high-value import category (€478/t) signals that regulatory drivers — particularly the EU's mandates for recycled content in plastic packaging — are creating new demand for specific waste streams, even as overall volumes adjust to a post-China equilibrium. Going forward, the EU's capacity to develop domestic recycling infrastructure and manage its import dependencies will be critical to the stability and sustainability of this market.