The huge impact of EPR fees to be published
FPA members report that on the positive side, Defra finally publishing the packaging material base fees (below) on which their EPR bills for 2024 will be produced, at least helps them to estimate how much they will be paying even though the size of the bill is likely to be huge. On the more sinister side, the big increase in the fee (a further £25 / tonne) to be paid for fibre-based composite packaging versus paper and card comes as a hammer blow, particularly where there are so many foodservice packaging applications for which FBCs are realistically the only option. 
Copyright: The Foodservice Packaging Association (FPA)
Of course there is always an alternative for anything and everything, but in many instances FBCs are the lower carbon option, the more effective option in terms of product protection and consumer usage as well as price. This is also set against a background of major reductions of non-fibre content of very many FBC packs and the emergence of new plant-based non-plastic linings. We wonder whether the latter have entered Defra’s thinking.
The FPA has received many phone calls regarding market distortion, but we believe this is exactly what Defra seeks. In a world of simpler recycling, based on core materials, then Defra’s ideal is mono material packaging. If not mono material then packaging formats all in the same material.
The fibre based composite fee is now over double that of paper and card and with fee modulation some packaging could find itself paying double the EPR base fee for their material by 2028. Assuming local authority packaging waste management costs increase annually because of their operational costs such as labour and fuel costs and if this is reflected in EPR base fees with FBC’s accounting for disproportionally more of local authority cost increases then its EPR fee could be closer to five times that of paper and card.
In last Friday’s announcement the fee for plastic was reduced by 13% taking it from a position of being £30.00 tonne more than FBCs in the last illustrative fees published to £38.00 tonne less. Has Defra really intended to make plastic more attractive than fibre based composites? While meeting the mono material desire it would seem to go against the wishes of Defra ministers, who for the last twenty years have been encouraging paper and card at the expense of plastic. Perhaps Extended Producer Responsibility, Simpler Recycling and Recycling Assessment Methodology (RAM) aren’t quite all moving in the same direction.
Invoices will be sent to obligated producers in October 2025, with payments due 50-days after the invoice date, either in a lump sum or by quarterly instalments. However, there is the no small matter of large producers of household packaging reporting the packaging recyclability data for each of their packs under the Recyclability Assessment Methodology (RAM) requirements before 01 October 2025 for 01 January to 30 June 2025. The FPA is informed by compliance agencies that to meet this deadline businesses need to have the information available by the end of July if using a compliance agency to submit the information. Again, this is a further administration cost, which businesses are hardly able to absorb, and nor should they be expected to do so.
Given the amount of FBC packaging that is used across the economy, including non-food packaging, then the net result must add to inflation. In an article on its front page last Friday the Daily Telegraph referred to EPR as a net-zero tax, citing wine will increase by 9p a bottle, with EPR and PRNs amounting to more than the cost of the bottle. This was repeated in other newspapers and trade magazines, and if producers are to push back against what amounts as an unavoidable tax, then a similar level of activity to that undertaken by the glass sector is needed so that consumers are aware of the consequences for them and their pockets. The glass sector has mounted an excellent campaign, but the consequences for much of foodservice packaging may well be more extreme.
While we may not be able to get government to change its mind, the public is entitled to be made aware of the consequences for them as prices increase, with most likely no reduction in their council tax.
Modulation fee guidance published
At the same time the EPR fees were announced, Defra also published a Pack UK policy statement for Packaging EPR modulation fees which vary ‘EPR
for packaging household packaging waste disposal fees to reflect the extent to which household packaging supplied by a producer in a packaging category is environmentally sustainable’. The RAM will be used as the measure of environmental sustainability’.
The use of the term environmental sustainability is concerning since we’ve never seen an agreed definition of this term which has been so widely abused. Most might think the metric surrounding RAM would simply be recycling achieved. A while ago Defra referred to sustainability in the context of packaging in terms of not having a negative impact on the environment and actively reducing waste. Some might wish to consider carbon as a factor which if applied might certainly impact RAM if not the fees themselves since a ranking of fees by material would unlikely match a ranking of fees expressed in their carbon impact per tonne.
The all important table in the guidance reveals modulation which is calculated by ‘multiplying the household packaging waste disposal fee element by the modulation factor’ means the packaging rated Red on the RAG (Red, Amber and Green scale with amber neutral) will pay double its material fee.
The guidance can be found here