One packaging database for every compliance report
Packaging data management software that holds your packaging once, at component level, and produces every report from it: UK pEPR, Plastic Packaging Tax, PPWR conformity, French, German and Italian declarations and sorting labels. Enter it once, report it many times.
A spreadsheet per obligation
Most producers arrive at this problem the same way. A spreadsheet was built for the UK submission. Then a different one for Plastic Packaging Tax, because that needs recycled content per component. Then one for the German declaration, with its own material mapping. Then PPWR arrived and wanted construction detail nobody had recorded.
Each file is a partial copy of the same underlying facts, cut a different way, and each one drifts from the others the moment a component changes. The cost is not the duplication. It is that no single file is authoritative, so when two disagree there is no way to know which is wrong - and a producer in that position is reporting numbers they cannot defend.
The fix is not a better spreadsheet. It is holding the facts once, at the level the obligations actually ask about, and deriving each report from them.
What comes out of one data set
Every one of these is derived from the same component records. None of them requires a second entry of the same fact.
UK pEPR
RPD submission files, broken down by material, packaging level, intended use, activity and nation.
Plastic Packaging Tax
Per-component recycled content against the 30% threshold, as an exposure report.
EU PPWR
Declaration of Conformity, PP01 to PP12 identification, Annex II grades and recycled content.
National EU schemes
LUCID, CITEO and CONAI declarations, each in its own format, and the component data for other schemes as CSV or Excel.
Sorting labels
The Article 12 label for every component, derived from material, format and composition.
Deposit Return Scheme
Container material, type and weight, exported as CSV or Excel. No DRS report is produced.
Digital Product Passport
Material composition, recyclability, recycled content and labelling, exposed via API.
Sustainability reporting
Portfolio-level material, weight and recycled content positions, over time.
The decisions that make it work
A packaging database is only as good as the shape of its schema. These are the choices that decide whether a report can be produced or has to be assembled.
Products and packaging units
A SKU can have more than one packaging unit, and a packaging unit is made of components. Modelling all three levels separately is what makes the material split reportable.
Components as the unit of truth
Material, weight, recycled content, construction, recyclability. A bottle, its closure, its label and its sleeve are four records because they behave differently at every point that matters.
Versions that carry a date
A bill of materials is versioned with an effective-from date. A respecification mid-year means the period spans two versions, and a report that cannot represent that reports one of them wrongly.
Nullability that means something
Recycled content is a nullable value. "Not recorded" and "confirmed zero" are different states with different remedies, and collapsing them into one blank hides every data gap you have.
Assessments with provenance
A recyclability grade is stored with the basis it rests on, the date it was made and when it expires, so a grade that has lapsed is visible as such.
Supplier declarations as evidence
Data that came from a supplier keeps the declaration, the submission date and the reference. That trail is what turns a number into evidence when a submission is queried.
Filling the database
The honest part of this pitch: a packaging database is only useful once it is populated, and populating it is the work. Component weights and recycled content figures live with suppliers, and most have never been asked for them in a structured form.
So the collection is part of the product rather than a prerequisite for it. Suppliers submit against a structured declaration, the data validates on intake, and what is still missing is visible as a gap rather than as a blank cell nobody has noticed. You start reporting from what you have and close the gaps against a list, instead of waiting for completeness that never arrives.
See your packaging in it
Bring a slice of your portfolio - ideally the part that is currently spread across three spreadsheets.
Southampton SO14 3TG, UK