EU Packaging Regulation 2025/40: applicable from 12 August, the data sits in five different systems

A typical scenario, not our own case. A food company sells into eight Member States, with four hundred SKUs in its catalogue: trays, stretch film, cartons, pallets. Each pack comes from a different supplier — whoever prints the board, whoever extrudes the film, whoever supplies the recycled PET — and each one sends its own data sheet in its own format, PDF or email. Sales knows how many units it sold in Germany and how many in Spain. Purchasing knows roughly how much the film weighs per pack, in the bill of materials. Neither knows, for a single SKU, whether the pack it ships today is still the one a declaration of conformity was written for.

A rule that has applied for a week

Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste — the PPWR — entered into force on 11 February 2025, “the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal”, published on 22 January 2025 (Article 71). The same rule sets the date that matters for business: “It shall apply from 12 August 2026”, with one exception, Article 67(5), applying from 12 February 2029. From that date it repeals Directive 94/62/EC (Article 70). For anyone placing packaging on the Union market, the general obligations — declaration of conformity, technical documentation, registration — are no longer a future deadline: they have applied for seven days.

Not everything runs from the same date. Several requirements carry their own timeline: recyclability in grades A, B or C from 1 January 2030 (Article 6(3)), grades A or B only from 2038; minimum recycled-content shares in plastic packaging from 2030 and then 2040 (Article 7(1)-(2)); minimisation of weight and volume from 2030 (Article 10(1)); the harmonised material label from 12 August 2028 (Article 12(1)). Conditions defining packaging as “reusable” already apply, by contrast, to whatever was “placed on the market from 11 February 2025” (Article 11(1)).

The requirements, and the proof behind them

Article 5 states that packaging placed on the market “shall be so manufactured that the presence and concentration of substances of concern” is minimised: lead, cadmium, mercury and hexavalent chromium together “shall not exceed 100 mg/kg” (§4). From 12 August 2026, food-contact packaging may not contain PFAS above limits of 25-250 parts per billion or 50 parts per million (§5). Article 6 requires that “all packaging placed on the market shall be recyclable”, in grades A, B or C; Article 7 sets minimum shares of post-consumer recycled plastic, from 10 to 35 per cent by 2030 and from 25 to 65 per cent by 2040 depending on pack type, shown “in the technical documentation” of Annex VII (§6); Article 10 requires weight and volume to be “reduced to the minimum necessary to ensure its functionality”. For most of these the same clause recurs: compliance “shall be demonstrated in the technical documentation drawn up in accordance with Annex VII” (Articles 5(6), 6(9), 10(4)). Meeting the threshold is not enough: you must prove it, in writing, SKU by SKU — the same burden of proving, not just meeting, that applies to whoever protects a trade secret.

Where the data actually sits

The regulation draws the roles precisely. The “manufacturer” (Article 3(13)) is whoever has the packaging designed or made under its own name or trademark — almost always the food company itself, not whoever sells it the material. It is the manufacturer who must draw up the EU declaration of conformity and the technical documentation (Article 15). But the composition of the pack, the substances it contains, the proof behind its recycled content: that data belongs first to the “supplier” (Article 3(16)), whoever supplies packaging or packaging material to the manufacturer. Article 16 obliges the supplier to pass on “all the information and documentation necessary”, but says nothing about which system that should land in, or how it stays tied to the right SKU and batch once the supplier changes. It is the same gap between who must prove and who actually knows that applies to customs origin declarations, or to plot-level geolocation in a timber supply chain: the data originates outside the company that answers for it.

There is a third role, distinct from the manufacturer: the “producer” (Article 3(15)), usually the same food company again, but this time for extended producer responsibility. Producers register “in each Member State where they make packaging or packaged products available on the territory of the Member State for the first time” (Article 44(2)): one registration per Member State sold into, not a single one. The volumes that registration needs sit in the sales system, by product code — not by packaging component, and rarely cross-checked against the supplier sheet that describes what material that component is made of. Weight and the bill of materials sit in the ERP, often estimated. Contributions for extended producer responsibility (Article 45) sit in finance. None of these systems holds, on its own, the answer to a simple question: for this SKU, in this market, with which pack, made of what material, backed by what proof of recycled content.

Who answers along the chain

Article 15 requires the manufacturer to keep the technical documentation and the EU declaration of conformity “for 5 years” for single-use packaging, “for 10 years” for reusable packaging, from the date the packaging was placed on the market (§3), and to make them available to a national authority “within 10 days of receipt of the request” (§10). The importer carries the same retention duty and must first verify that the manufacturer has already completed the conformity assessment (Article 18). The distributor, before making packaging available, must check that “the producer that is subject to the obligations on extended producer responsibility […] is registered in the register” (Article 19(2)) — a check that presupposes knowing who, along its own chain, is actually the producer for that SKU. The fulfilment service provider in turn answers that storage and handling conditions “do not jeopardise the packaging’s compliance” with what it handles (Article 20). Penalties are set by the Member States by 12 February 2027 (Article 68): the regulation fixes no amounts, only that they be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive”. The PPWR stops once packaging is placed on the market: what happens afterwards, once it becomes waste, is a different traceability regime — the same distance between whoever generates the data and whoever answers for it applies downstream.

What we do not know

We give no legal advice and classify no pack: the recyclability grade and the conformity of a specific SKU remain a technical judgement for manufacturers. We have not verified the Italian implementation framework against a primary source — CONAI, Legislative Decree 152/2006 Part IV, any transposing decree — and we write nothing about it: that remains to be checked once the national text is available. The only penalties cited here are those read in Article 68; we report no others.

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The two axes, applied

Complying. The same system becomes a control running on the client’s own systems: for every SKU, which packaging components, of what material, at what weight and with what proof of recycled content, in which Member State and for how many units — with an alert when a stretch-film supplier or a bill of materials changes and the declaration on file is no longer supported. An exportable, dated file, ready for inspection or for the compliance scheme.

Deciding. The same system unifies the product master, the bill of materials, sales by Member State, supplier data sheets and document archives into a single operating model, on which AI agents execute decisions with a human operator in command — for large enterprises, defence, public administration and healthcare. Always in two delivery modes: on-premises, on autonomous machines needing no deep integration into the client’s network, or dedicated cloud, with a dedicated VPN and a data centre in Italy — always with shared management.

From the first session, at no cost, comes the dated list of your SKUs with, for each one, which data supports the packaging’s conformity, which system holds it and who updates it — blank boxes included. It stays yours even if we do not go on together. Talk to one of our engineers.