UK brands and retailers face higher packaging EPR costs and stricter data duties from 1 January 2026, after the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 were signed on 17 December 2025. The Statutory Instrument, published on legislation.gov.uk and applying UK‑wide, updates charges, introduces late assessments with interest, and rewrites the rules around mergers and brand transfers.

Who pays is sharpened. A person is treated as a liable producer for an assessment year if they were a producer at any point in that year, were a large producer in the prior calendar year, and supplied household packaging as a brand owner, packer/filler, importer or first UK owner, distributor, online marketplace operator or service provider. In practice, that makes brand owners and major importers the budget holders.

Charges rise across the schedule. Illustratively, the top‑tier producer registration moves to £2,842, compliance scheme operator registration to £8,691, and reprocessor registration to £3,228 with exporter registration at £574. A new £2,548 annual charge applies if a large producer wants to report closed loop packaging waste to reduce fees. Routine indexation of charges now resumes from 2027.

Fee modulation becomes more pointed. When calculating household packaging disposal fees, the scheme administrator may now reflect whether packaging uses no more material than reasonably necessary for its purpose. Lightweighting and design‑to‑minimise therefore carry a direct fee benefit, alongside recyclability and litter propensity.

A new closed loop offset is introduced for food‑grade plastic packaging collected directly from a producer’s own customers and recycled back into food‑grade material. To claim an offset, producers must pay the £2,548 charge, keep evidence from an accredited reprocessor or exporter, retain records for seven years, and ensure the waste is not mixed with other producers’ materials. If the claimed closed loop tonnage plus other relevant waste exceeds the household packaging you reported supplying, your credit for that category drops to zero.

An operational example helps. A high‑street beverage brand running a bring‑back scheme for PET bottles can offset that closed loop tonnage against disposal fees, provided it reports through one reprocessor, shows the output is food‑grade, and the packs were originally reported as supplied since 1 January 2024. Switching reprocessor mid‑period is permitted once, but aggregation beyond that is blocked.

Rule 67A creates a late assessment route. If the scheme administrator later discovers a business that should have been treated as a liable producer, it can estimate data using the best available evidence, issue a notice, and charge interest dated back to when the fees would have fallen due. There is a four‑year window to serve liability notices, extended to ten years where non‑compliance by the producer or its agent prevented timely calculation.

Mergers now have codified outcomes under regulation 27A. The combined company is treated as large if any merging entity was large in the merger year, must register within 28 days or by the earliest relevant deadline, and inherits continuing obligations and unpaid fees for the merger year and earlier years. Any PRNs or PERNs held by the merged bodies can be transferred to the combined company to meet recycling obligations.

Brand and business transfers carry their own regime in regulation 27B. The buyer must notify the agency within 28 days, register or re‑register if needed, and for the transfer year and the next two years will be treated as large if its adjusted turnover exceeded £2 million and adjusted packaging supplied topped 50 tonnes. Adjusted means the buyer’s figures plus the whole or relevant proportion of the seller’s, depending on whether a whole business, a part of a business, or just a brand moved.

Regulation 27C then shifts data and obligations. Both seller and buyer must submit, or resubmit, half‑year reports for the transfer year and the previous year, with packaging formerly supplied under the acquired brand treated as if supplied by the buyer. Recycling obligations move to the buyer, and disposal and administration fees for the assessment year are recalculated on the updated data even if the seller exits the market.

Material definitions are tightened in a way that affects fee bands. Packaging made of paperboard or paper fibres with plastic layers is only classed as paper or board if the plastic is no more than five per cent by mass; above that, it becomes a fibre‑based composite. That matters for items like takeaway cups and laminated boxes. Deposit return scheme carve‑outs are also adjusted so that deposit items, and lines exempted on low‑volume grounds in the relevant scheme, sit outside EPR scope.

Deadlines arrive quickly. By 28 January 2026 producers wanting to amend 2024 reports to include qualifying closed loop tonnage, or to include 2025 closed loop tonnage as relevant packaging waste, must pay the £2,548 charge. Amended half‑year reports for 2025 are due by 1 April 2026. Charities that operate as reprocessors or exporters come into full registration and enforcement from 1 January 2027.

Day‑to‑day compliance also shifts. Producers must inform the agency within 28 days when ceasing to be a producer, retain data and evidence for seven years, and avoid reporting closed loop tonnage without paying the additional charge, which is now a specific offence. Information sharing across agencies, the scheme administrator and any appointed Producer Responsibility Organisation is formalised to speed enforcement.

For finance directors, the planning checklist writes itself: budget for higher registration and administration charges; model disposal fees under the new modulation criteria; decide whether the economics justify paying for closed loop credits; and build EPR warranties and data‑handover obligations into any share or asset purchase agreement. The Government’s note says no significant impact is foreseen, but for consumer brands and large retailers this is real money and real process change.