93% of British businesses are affected by the new EU packaging rules. Is your packaging line ready?

The headline number

On 12 August 2026 the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) began to apply across Europe. Within a day of it taking effect, a survey of 200 British businesses by logistics specialist Advanced Supply Chain, reported by Packaging News and Circular Online on 13 August, found that 93% are already affected by the regulation or expect to be. Only a small minority believe it will pass them by.

The same survey shows how far along most companies are, and how far they have to go: 16% have already reformatted their packaging to comply, 39% are making changes now, and a further 32% are still reviewing and assessing their formats. In other words, nearly three quarters of affected businesses are mid-change or have not yet started.

One caveat worth knowing before you quote it: the survey covered non-food supply chains. If anything, that understates the position in food. Food packaging faces the same PPWR rules plus the UK’s own packaging reforms, which are further advanced and financially sharper.

What PPWR actually requires

PPWR replaces the old EU packaging directive with a single regulation that applies directly in every member state. For any UK manufacturer selling into the EU, the practical requirements include:

• All packaging placed on the EU market must be recyclable, graded against design-for-recycling criteria, by 2030; poorly graded packaging is progressively pushed out of the market.
• Minimum recycled-content thresholds for plastic packaging, and packaging minimisation duties that outlaw excess weight and empty space.
• Reuse targets for transport packaging: 40% of pallets, crates and trays used between businesses must be reusable within a system by January 2030.
• Conformity paperwork from day one: an EU declaration of conformity and technical file for packaging, with importers obliged to verify it. There is no sell-through period for old stock.

Around 30 delegated acts are still to come, including labelling rules now expected in late 2026, so the detail will keep moving. The direction, however, is fixed, and it points the same way as UK policy: less plastic, more recyclable and fibre-based packaging, and evidence to prove it.

The UK side: the invoice arrives in November

British manufacturers do not need to look across the Channel to feel this. Under the UK’s packaging Extended Producer Responsibility scheme (pEPR), the scheme administrator PackUK has confirmed that Year 2 invoices will land by the end of November 2026, and for the first time they will be modulated by recyclability: hard-to-recycle plastic packaging attracts the highest fees, while recyclable paper and board sits at the bottom of the scale. The gap between a plastic tray and a board or fibre tray now shows up as a line on an invoice, and the red-rated multiplier increases every year to 2029.

This is why the material shift keeps accelerating. A UPM and Smithers survey of packaging professionals published in July 2026 found that 88% expect legislation to significantly drive material selection, and that fibre is expected to lead global food packaging by 2045. Regulation, not consumer preference, is now the main engine behind the move from plastic to board and fibre.

Why this is a machinery question

Most of the compliance conversation happens between packaging technologists and converters. The converters’ pitch for board and fibre trays is that they run on existing form-fill-seal and tray-sealing equipment without capital investment. That is broadly true for sealing. It is silent on feeding.

Every tray that reaches your tray sealer or flow wrapper has to be denested and fed first. Board and fibre trays do not behave like plastic ones: they vary in dimension, they warp with moisture, and they nest tightly and inconsistently. A denester set up for CPET will not simply accept a moulded fibre tray on Monday morning. Manufacturers who switch materials to bring their pEPR fees down, or to keep EU customers, often discover that the infeed end of the line is where the new format succeeds or fails.

We automate sustainable packaging formats that conventional machinery struggles to handle. Our machines are already denesting card trays and barrier-lined paperboard trays in production, and compressed fibre trays have run successfully on our in-house test rig. As food packaging moves away from plastic, PiP Automation provides the equipment needed to make sustainable packaging run at production speed.

What to do now

• If you export to the EU: confirm who in your business owns the PPWR declaration of conformity, and check your 2030 recyclability grades with your converter.
• If you are UK-only: model your Year 2 pEPR fees before the November invoice, and cost the board or fibre alternative alongside them.
• If you are considering a format switch: test the new tray on real equipment before you commit. Send us your trays, we will run them on our test rig and send you the video.