The UK Deposit Return Scheme is coming. Your packaging data will determine your readiness.
Merchant Packaging holds container material, type and weight at SKU and component level - much of the data foundation you need for DRS registration and reporting when the scheme goes live.
What DRS requires
The UK Deposit Return Scheme launches on 1 October 2027. England and Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each have their own scheme in law, but all four are run by the same Deposit Management Organisation (DMO), trading as Exchange for Change. A flat 20p deposit applies to single-use drinks containers from 150ml to 3 litres made wholly or mainly of PET plastic, steel or aluminium. Wales also includes glass from launch, with a zero deposit during a transition period. Producers and importers of in-scope drinks products will need to register with the DMO, report the number and type of containers placed on market, and pay producer fees plus deposit contributions.
The data requirements are specific: container material (PET, aluminium, steel, glass), container volume, container type (bottle, can), and the number of units placed on market per reporting period. This data must be traceable to individual SKUs.
Why start now
DRS will not appear overnight. Businesses that already hold structured packaging data at SKU and component level will have a straightforward path to DRS compliance - the data already exists, it just needs to be reported in the DRS format.
Businesses that do not hold this data will face a scramble: identifying which SKUs are in scope, collecting container specifications from across their range, and building reporting processes from scratch under deadline pressure.
The smarter approach is to capture this data as part of your existing packaging compliance workflow. If you are already managing EPR declarations and PPWR compliance in Merchant Packaging, much of the container-level data DRS draws on is already there.
How Merchant Packaging helps
- Container material, type and weight held at SKU and component level as part of standard data entry
- Beverage bottle flag and intended use recorded per component and SKU
- Movements recorded with quantity, date and jurisdiction, so unit counts can be drawn per period
- The same records exported as CSV or Excel to prepare your DRS registration and returns
- Merchant Packaging does not produce DRS reports or a DRS export in the DMO's format
Book a demo to see how your existing packaging data maps to DRS readiness
Tell us what you already hold at SKU level and we will show you what DRS still needs from it.
Southampton SO14 3TG, UK