What is the plastic packaging tax?

November 16, 2021

The new tax which comes into force in April 2022 will affect importers of plastic packaging, UK producers of plastic packaging, business customers of producers and importers of plastic packaging, and consumers who buy goods in plastic packaging in the UK and costs may be passed on through the supply chain.

The tax will apply to plastic packaging on a per-component basis, plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content will be taxed at £200/tonne.

Over the last 12 months, we have seen a steady increase in demand for our new range of pallet bands, some major retailers have taken on board the impact plastic is having on the environment as well as considering the new plastic tax waste.

We have found demand coming from large warehouse operations whereby goods are generally transported in and around the warehouse.

Looking at a recent case study, a major fashion retailer came to Icon Flexpack looking for a solution to help quickly get products off containers booked in, checked and then categorised into order to be transported into a different department within the warehouse.

Handling almost 50 pallets an hour proved costly and time consuming having to load multiple boxes onto pallets – wrap with shrink wrap and move to the required destination then the pallets had to be unwrapped by hand resulting in a lot of plastic waste as shrink wrap cannot be reused and is obviously no good.

We took a range of our rubber pallet bands over to see the client on a site survey to help determine which bands were most effective in stabilising the pallets.

After successful trials, the company is now using a couple of different sizes for both standard and euro pallets and our solution has completely eliminated the need to shrink wrap pallets unnecessarily.

The pallet bands are not only effective at stabilising the pallets but can also be reused multiple times – not only that they have since found alternative uses for the bands on bigger products once they’re no longer suitable for the pallets.

As a result of this plastic waste has reduced quite significantly in this particular department which will help towards the Plastic Packaging Tax.

If you consider the haulage industry for example where lots of loading and unloading of multiple wagons takes place through each day and night, until now shrink wrapping pallets has been the best solution, even though there is lots of waste produced on a daily basis but now with the plastic tax coming into force, many hauliers will need to look for an alternative solution and our pallet bands could be the perfect fit.