The European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) has been in effect since the deadline in August 2026. For procurement departments, this has shifted the topic from a project-based task to a compliance requirement: packaging data is now needed for every single item and every supplier. Six weeks later, it is clear that very few companies have completed this process.

In our webinar, Moritz Flick (Customer Development at Tacto) assesses the current status of industrial companies, identifies the stumbling blocks that consistently arise in client discussions and round tables, and shares proven approaches.

The status six weeks after the deadline

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A survey of participants paints a mixed picture. Most companies need to collect packaging data from 25 to 100 suppliers, with some needing to reach out to more than 500. Regarding implementation progress, only a small fraction report being fully finished. The majority are in the middle of the process, and a significant number still have work to do.

Participants identified the declaration of conformity, varying national requirements, and data availability as the biggest hurdles. Moritz Flick explains that these three points are interconnected: only when supplier data is complete can a company build its own documentation properly.

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Where implementation gets stuck in practice

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Moritz Flick points out that compliance must be documented per item, not as a blanket statement for the entire portfolio. With 200 suppliers and multiple items each, this quickly results in thousands of individual records, which are often still tracked manually. On top of that, responses are inconsistent: one supplier uploads a document, another sends an export with multiple files, and a third doesn't respond at all, often because they don't have the data themselves yet.

A second issue concerns storage. Documents are scattered across SharePoint, Excel, and supplier portals; while they exist, they aren't accessible at the click of a button. Furthermore, there is the question of responsibility: packaging data affects procurement, quality assurance, logistics, sustainability, and sales simultaneously. Without a shared data foundation, each department works with its own version of the truth.

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What has proven effective in practice

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The first step is internal: clarify which packaging is actually affected and where the company stands in the supply chain before sending out the first external request. Second, bundle your inquiries; if you are already sending out a compliance round for other regulations, attach the packaging questions instead of starting a separate wave. Third, a short questionnaire pays off: the fewer fields there are, the faster and cleaner the response. Fourth, once you reach a certain number of suppliers and items, the topic becomes a management task; a system where requests, responses, and documents converge in one place is more reliable than an overgrown Excel landscape. And fifth, Moritz Flick recommends documenting your own process with dates and responsible parties so that it remains traceable what was requested and answered when. In the second part of the webinar, he demonstrates how this looks in Tacto: suppliers and items are selected via product groups, suppliers enter their data via an individual link without needing a portal, AI reads the uploaded documents, and the records are then stored at the item level, including alerts for expiring validity.

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Conclusion

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The PPWR is not the only compliance requirement that procurement departments have to collect. The number of regulations has grown from a handful to over a dozen in the last two decades, and further stages regarding labeling and recycled content will follow in the coming years. The same process therefore applies to REACH, RoHS, or long-term supplier declarations. The webinar shows that the failure to meet PPWR requirements is less about a lack of good intentions and more about a lack of structure. Those who clarify the scope early, bundle their inquiries, and manage records in one central location reach a reliable status much faster than those relying on individual email requests. The content reflects experiences from client projects and round tables and does not constitute legal advice.

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Six weeks after the deadline, Moritz Flick (Customer Development at Tacto) takes stock of the PPWR: where industrial companies stand in their implementation, what the practical challenges are regarding documentation, and which approaches have proven successful. This includes an outlook on upcoming phases and a live demo showing how packaging inquiries and other compliance documentation can be bundled in Tacto, automatically extracted, and stored at the article level.