PPWR Beyond the Factory Gate: What the New EU Packaging Regulation Means for Food Supply Chains
Since 12 August 2026, the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40) has been legally binding in most of its provisions. For companies along the food supply chain, from producers and processors to retailers, this ends a multi-year transition period. What used to be a future topic for sustainability departments is now everyday practice. Packaging must demonstrably comply with the new European requirements. This applies not only to consumer packaging on supermarket shelves, but above all to transport and secondary packaging that circulates between farms, plants, warehouses and stores.
The PPWR has been in force since 12 August 2026 and replaces the previous EU Packaging Directive 94/62/EC. The key difference is that, as a regulation, it applies directly and uniformly in all Member States, without the detour of national transposition laws. In Germany, the Packaging Law Implementation Act (VerpackDG), which has also applied since 12 August 2026, supplements it by regulating national structures such as LUCID registration, system participation and deposit schemes.
The regulation’s content can be roughly divided into five areas. First, the reduction of weight, volume and unnecessary packaging layers. Second, recyclability: by 2030, almost all packaging must be recyclable in an economically viable way, which makes composite materials increasingly unattractive. Third, binding recycled-content quotas: from 1 January 2030, plastic packaging must contain between 10 and 35 percent post-consumer recycled content, depending on the category. For contact-sensitive food packaging made of PET, the quota is 30 percent and rises further from 2040. Fourth, since 12 August 2026, stricter limits have applied to substances of concern such as PFAS in food-contact packaging. Fifth, and the real core of the regulation for transport and logistics packaging, binding reuse targets: for transport packaging in e-commerce and in industrial and commercial logistics, reuse is to become the norm by 2030, with a target quota of 40 percent.
This last point directly affects companies in the food industry. Anyone who still uses single-use packaging to transport goods between producers, processors and retailers faces the question of how to switch these processes to reusable systems in the coming years in an economical and practical way. In addition, from 12 February 2029, reusable packaging must be digitally traceable, using QR codes or comparable digital data carriers and harmonised labels. Anyone investing in a system today should therefore look not only at reusability, but also at digital tracking.
The food industry faces a particular challenge that makes the transition more demanding than in other sectors. Packaging that comes into contact with food must be food-safe, hygienically spotless and often temperature-stable at the same time, whether it is used for delicate fruit and vegetables, meat, fish or dairy products. A reusable system that cannot reliably meet these requirements is simply not viable in the food sector. This is exactly why relabelling or swapping materials is not enough. What is needed are well-designed, closed loops with professional cleaning, inspection and maintenance.
How such a loop can work in practice, and which solutions already exist for the food supply chain today, we will show in our next Newsroom article in November.
