Rynek recyklingu w Europie Centralnej, różnice pomiędzy recyklerami z Zachodu i Wschodu UE, strategie obronne recyklerów na obecny trudny czas - to główne elementy wywiadu, jakiego udzielił Prezes Wydawnictwa BUSINESS IMAGE oraz analityk rynku recyklingu Waldemar Sobański głównemu europejskiemu portalowi przemysłu tworzyw sztucznych Plastics Information Europe (www.plasteurope.com).
Z treścią rozmowy o polskim i europejskim rynku recyklingu można zapoznać się tutaj. Uprzedzamy, że materiał jest za paywallem.
Rozmowa została przeprowadzona w połowie grudnia 2025, ukazała się na plasteurope.com w połowie stycznia 2026, obecnie nie jest już uwidaczniana na głównej stronie portalu, stąd też pozwalamy sobie opublikować je pełny zapis.
Journalist:
– “The more recycling companies collapse in the West, the more will survive in the East.” In your view, is Europe currently experiencing a kind of endurance race – a race to see who goes bankrupt first? And do companies from Eastern Europe really perform better in this competition?
Waldemar Sobanski:
The differences between recyclers from Western and Central Europe are now clearly visible. Under current market conditions, I see two key factors – and both work in favor of Central Europe.
The first factor is labor costs. They are significantly lower in our region. Employment in Central Europe is subject to a lower fiscal burden, labor law remains more flexible, and companies additionally have access to workers from Ukraine – war migrants who have tangibly strengthened the labor market. In Poland’s recycling sector, the ratio of blue-collar to white-collar workers is approximately 9:1. Blue-collar workers employed under standard employment contracts receive wages at the lower end of the national average range.
The second factor is a significantly lower level of investment-related debt. Recyclers in Central Europe simply did not have time to accumulate debt. The plastics and recyclates boom of 2021–2022 triggered a wave of intensive investment in Western Europe. The future appeared bright, politically underpinned, and stable. Companies invested heavily in new technological lines and automation in an attempt to offset high labor costs.
The problem is that the boom very quickly gave way to crisis, and today – I do not hesitate to say this – we are dealing with a collapse of an existential nature. The debt loop rapidly deprived many Western companies of oxygen, leading to bankruptcies or painful restructuring processes.
In Central Europe, the situation was different. Until the prosperity of 2021–2022, recycling here was a low-scale business, operating almost on a craft-like basis. Average industry profitability hovered around 4%. During the boom period, it rose to over 11%. Recyclers in our part of Europe simply began to enjoy the profits they had earned – and when the time came to think about development investments, the favorable market conditions had already come to an end.
I am the author of the thesis that the more recycling companies fail in the West, the more will survive in the eastern part of the European Union. There is nothing paradoxical about this. Demand for recyclates across the EU has dropped sharply – both for purely economic reasons and due to the lack of effective instruments to enforce already adopted regulations on plastics processors. Today, demand remains at a constant level.
Recyclers from Central Europe have lower fixed costs, are not burdened with debt servicing, and therefore have a significantly higher chance of survival. The situation is the opposite in Western Europe – especially in the case of companies that are not integrated either commercially or capital-wise. They simply do not have “deep pockets.”
One of the best defensive strategies in the current environment is for a recycler to achieve the status of a circular economy company. In practice, this means closing the entire value chain within a single entity: the recycler processes waste into recyclate, then manufactures a new product from it – or with its participation – and places it on the market. Such activity can still be profitable today, sometimes even quite profitable.
Let me illustrate this with figures. In Poland, approximately 800,000 tonnes of plastic regranulates were produced in 2024, of which over 300,000 tonnes were used by companies closing the loop. Average profitability in industrial processing in Poland in 2024 was 4–5%. In recycling, it stood at 2.5%, while companies closing the loop exceeded 6%. The difference is fundamental.
Of course, loop-closing activities are mainly carried out by polyolefin recyclers. Recycling of PVC, PS/ABS, and PET in Poland remains in the red – it is economically inefficient. Of the 500,000 tonnes of regranulates produced in 2024, nearly 70% were exported, with over 50% going to Germany. Export is therefore currently the main anchor stabilizing the business of recyclers that do not close the loop.
Journalist:
– How far can this go? Is it possible to estimate how many companies in Eastern and Western Europe may ultimately disappear before the market returns to equilibrium? And what will be the consequences for Europe’s sustainability goals? Should lawmakers be concerned?
Waldemar Sobanski:
Politics operates according to entirely different rules than business and economics. These are two separate worlds that rarely intersect and more often attempt to impose primacy on one another. States governed by plutocracy are few today – the vast majority are controlled by political and administrative elites.
In my view, recycling has been harnessed to the ideology of the Green Deal as a tool for political mobilization of new voter groups. In many countries, this has helped existing political forces remain in power and has provided global corporations with fresh marketing ammunition. Recycling itself, however, appears to be of rather limited interest to European lawmakers – there is no visible, comprehensive attempt to address the current existential problems of this industrial sector.
More tangible actions are being taken by individual governments. Particularly interesting is the so-called Italian experiment, an attempt to forcibly improve the situation of recycling companies by accelerating the implementation of PPWR regulations. The concept is interesting, but it immediately encounters strong resistance from plastics processors. The outcome of this confrontation in Italy will influence the actions of industry organizations in the largest EU countries and, consequently, the scale of public aid for the sector.
If nothing changes, a large portion of recycling companies will collapse – perhaps even half of them, measured by the number of entities rather than production capacity volume. A wave of bankruptcies is already sweeping through Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Benelux countries. In Poland, so far no major recycler has gone bankrupt, although one significant player has entered a process of financial restructuring.
The paradox is that the European Union’s course toward resource recovery from waste is accelerating. We have PPWR in packaging, and similar regulations will soon cover construction, automotive, and other sectors. The result? A massive, structural deficit of recycled materials.
In this situation, the EU and national governments will be forced to extend support to corporations that launch large-scale chemical recycling installations – the only ones capable of meeting the demand generated by upcoming regulations. Mechanical recycling of plastics will be marginalized.
In short, corporations – highly useful instruments in the execution of state policy – will displace independent private businesses from the recycling sector. And it is the corporations that will operate within the circular economy.
