More evidence that energy costs are hurting UK manufacturing

Via BusinessGreen I see that there is fresh survey evidence that rising and uncertain energy costs are an increasing concern to UK manufacturers.

I have argued before that UK energy policy is placing UK manufacturers at a significant competitive disadvantage to overseas rivals. It is this impact on their cost base which means that they are unable to afford the same prices for secondary material inputs as reprocessors and manufacturers in other parts of the world.

I do wish that the UK reprocessing sector would recognise this as the principal cause of their relative difficulties, rather than consistently trying to push additional costs on to waste producers and harming other productive parts of the economy.

Resource Association calls for increased costs to waste producers

I see the Resource Association has published a report looking at the costs to its Members of cleaning up contamination in recyclate under a range of different scenarios. To me this doesn't really tell us anything Earth shattering. Removing contamination incurs costs. The question is who should bear these costs and who is in the best position to do so.

I don't think their analysis supports the conclusion that pushing these costs from their Members to waste producers (which is in effect what they are suggesting) would lead to increased net benefits to the UK economy. On the contrary, the additional costs (in terms of both time and money) faced by waste producers means that other productive parts of the economy are less able to invest and create jobs (or alternatively it means that householders are less able to invest in leisure activities). This effect may be larger or smaller than the gross investment of Resource Association Members, meaning the net impact could be positive or negative.

Unfortunately this is the sort of ambiguous message which doesn't sit well with policy makers. Also, given that the impacts on waste producers are likely to be diffused across the wider economy, whilst the impacts on Resource Association Members are more concentrated, policy makers are more likely to be persuaded by the louder arguments put forward in reports like these.