WRAP has published the latest in its series of market situation reports. The report discusses the key trends in the UK markets for recovered paper and board over the past year or so, including arisings, collections, prices and end-markets. Key themes are:

• declining paper consumption has led to lower volumes of paper recovery, despite rising recovery rates; 
• production capacity has continued to contract in certain parts of the UK paper manufacturing industry but has expanded in others. As a consequence, the nature of the demand for recovered fibre is changing; and
• prices have been very volatile over the past 18 months, reaching unusually high levels in mid 2008, before declining steeply and then recovering towards historic averages.