South Africa EPR regulations 2020: the 10-tonne producer test, PRO duties and a 15-year maximum penalty

South Africa EPR regulations: the two instruments and what each decides

A compliance team asking “are we caught?” needs the notice; a team asking “what must we file, and when?” needs the regulations. Exhibit 2 maps each question to the clause that answers it. Both are held as one rule, PR-ZA-001, on the South Africa page of the SPI Regulation Tracker.

GN R1184 was published in Government Gazette 43879 and GN 1187 in Gazette 43882, both on 5 November 2020 and both signed by the then Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (gov.za PDF of GN 1187). GN 20 of 2021, dated 15 January 2021, moved commencement to 5 May 2021, and GN 400 of 2021, in Gazette 44539 on 5 May 2021, rewrote large parts of both, including the whole of Annexure 1 (Acts Online, Annexure 1 note). GN 5520 of 2024, dated 6 November 2024, substituted the fee submission rule in regulation 7(2).

The regulations apply only to products identified under section 18(1)(a) and to their producers (reg. 3(1)). They do not apply to the portion of identified products that is exported, or to producers who make them for export only (reg. 3(3)). For an exporter with a domestic line, only the domestic tonnes count.

Who is an obligated producer: the four-gate test

SPI reads paragraph 1 of GN 1187 as four gates in a fixed order (Exhibit 3). A business is an obligated producer only if it passes all four. This is SPI’s framework for planning, drawn from the official text; it is not legal advice, and edge cases should be checked with counsel.

Gate 1, the product. Paragraph 3 lists eight classes at end of life: paper and paper packaging, plastic packaging, biodegradable and compostable packaging, single-use products, single-use compostable products, single-use biodegradable products, glass packaging and metal packaging containers. Paragraph 4 then names the items: liquid board, corrugated case materials, labels and paper sacks under paper; polyolefins of resin codes 2, 4 and 5, PET rigid and flexible, polystyrene, PVC, vinyls and multilayer packaging including resin code 7 under plastics; films, cups, cutlery, straws, trays and punnets under single-use products; bottles and jars under glass; and tinplate and aluminium under metals.

Gate 2, the tonnage. The notice identifies as producers those who place in excess of 10 tonnes of identified products onto the market on an annual basis (GN 1187, para 1, as shown on lawlibrary.org.za). The text does not say whether the 10 tonnes is counted per class or in total. SPI reads it as total identified products, since the sentence speaks of identified products as a group, but SPI has not yet confirmed a DFFE statement. For planning, SPI counts every class a producer places.

Gate 3, the exclusions. Plastic carrier bags and plastic flat bags were taken out by paragraph 3(9), added by GN 400 of 2021; they sit under separate bag regulations that this piece does not cover. The packaging definition leaves out bulk shipping containers, timber and textile packaging, and plastic pallets and industrial bulk containers over 1,000 litres. Everything else that contains, transports, handles, protects, promotes, markets or sells a product counts, whether primary, secondary or tertiary.

Gate 4, the chain position. This is where most disputes arise, and Exhibit 4 works through it.

Who is the producer: brand owner, agent, importer or retailer

Paragraph 1 allocates the producer role by brand domicile, not by who physically fills the pack. Exhibit 4 applies it to seven common supply chains.

Three points follow from the text. First, the words “and/or” in paragraph 1(a) leave the split between converter and brand owner open; GN 1187 does not say which of them pays when both are local. SPI analysis: a written split between converter and customer of which party declares each tonne to the PRO keeps the same tonne from being missed or counted twice.

Second, for foreign brands the bill of lading decides. A brand selling into South Africa through several distributors without an agency agreement makes each importer of record a producer for its own imports. The ESI-Africa report of 24 October 2024 on the electrical and electronic equipment sector shows the DFFE treats unregistered parties as free riders: it said the Department had issued 37 pre-compliance notices to non-compliant EPR producers in that sector. SPI has not yet confirmed any comparable notices for paper and packaging.

Third, the retailer is the producer of last resort. Paragraph 1(c) catches identified products that are neither locally branded nor imported branded goods. On SPI’s reading, a retailer selling items in plain packaging it buys in, or service packaging handed over at the till, is the party paragraph 1(c) names as producer for those tonnes. SPI’s comparison of EPR producer definitions shows how unusual this fallback is: most EU, UK and US schemes reach the retailer only through the brand owner chain.

What falls outside

Exhibit 5 lists every carve-out SPI found in the two texts, with its clause.

The list is short by international standards. There is no de minimis exemption by turnover, no lighter regime for small producers and no exemption for business-to-business packaging: secondary and tertiary packaging are in scope. The 2023 draft amendments proposed exempting the pharmaceutical sector from EPR (gov.za, 9 May 2023), but SPI has not yet confirmed that this change was made. The consolidated text on lawlibrary.org.za shows only GN 5520 of 2024 as an amendment after 2021, and it touches regulation 7(2) alone.

The duties: producer, PRO and own-scheme producer

GN 400 of 2021 restructured the duties into three regulations: regulation 5 for every producer, regulation 5A for PROs and regulation 5B for a producer running its own scheme. Several duties carry their own clocks (Exhibit 6).

Regulation 6 sets the minimum content of a scheme: cleaner production and design for recyclability, waste reduction by composition, volume or weight with timeframes, reuse, recycling and recovery, reporting on recycled content and recovery rates, and government priorities such as job creation. Regulation 11 sets the PRO’s form: an autonomous body set up by producers through a due process, registered as a not-for-profit company, governed by a board of producer representatives, and following the Companies Act, 2008 on governance and conflicts of interest.

How the EPR fee is set and capped

The fee is proposed by the PRO and its members and applied to members in proportion to the products they place on the market (reg. 7(1)). Since GN 5520 of 2024, the proposal and its motivation must be sent electronically to the Minister, who must obtain the concurrence of the Minister responsible for finance (reg. 7(2)). The fee must rest on nett cost recovery and be differentiated by product, taking into account weight, recyclability, demand, collection and treatment, administration, communication and surveillance, less the revenue from recycled material. The latest fee must at all times be publicly available on the PRO’s website (reg. 7(4)).

Administration costs are capped at 20% of revenue in year 1, 15% in year 2 and 12% in year 3 (reg. 7(7)). The text is not fully consistent: regulation 7(8) provides for a review of the administration fee in year 2, while 7(7)(c) refers to year 3. A producer running its own scheme sets and allocates its own fee under regulation 7A, under the same Treasury concurrence and publication rules.

The scale of the money is now visible. DFFE told an industry webinar on 14 May 2026 that EPR fee revenue across all sectors roughly tripled from about R0.25 billion in 2022 to about R0.75 billion in 2025, and that retained surpluses exceeded R100 million (DFFE, CAIA webinar). The Department listed surplus accumulation among its concerns, alongside free riders and patchy reporting. Rates by PRO are in SPI’s African EPR piece and are not repeated here; the euro and dollar comparisons are in SPI’s EPR fees per tonne analysis.

Registration and reporting: the clock

Exhibit 7 puts the registration and reporting duties on one line, from commencement to the next filing.

Registration. Existing producers had to register within six months of the notice; the Department set the deadline at 5 November 2021 and said all existing producers and PROs must register with it before that date (gov.za, 19 January 2021). New producers register within three months of being established, through the online system, and the Department must issue a registration number within 30 days of receiving a form in which all sections are correctly completed (reg. 4(3)). A form with gaps does not start that 30-day clock. PROs register within six months of commencement, or within three months of being set up (reg. 10).

Scheme. A new producer has two routes under paragraph 6 of GN 1187: develop and submit its own scheme within six months of starting operations, or subscribe to an existing scheme within three months. Most choose the second; the Philippines EPR Act piece shows a similar choice between individual and collective compliance.

Reporting. A PRO files an unaudited interim performance report on January to June within four weeks of 30 June, and an annual external performance audit within three months of 31 December, covering performance against targets, fee allocation, finances, governance and jobs created (reg. 8). Quantities go to the national waste information system each year. A producer running its own scheme files the same reports, without the governance part. The Department may carry out its own audits, and must review each scheme at five-year intervals and may review it at any time; a PRO or producer may ask for an earlier review if targets are missed or exceeded (reg. 9).

SPI’s EPR data for South Africa carries the same dates. Note one difference with older readings: the consolidated text now puts the financial plan for the following year at 30 November, not 30 June.

How many producers have registered

The Department has published two counts in six months, and they do not match (Exhibit 8).

By SPI’s calculation, paper and packaging is 61.0% of the 1,086 registrations in the webinar count and 71.0% of the 2,095 in the draft strategy. Fourteen new packaging PROs registered in 2025 alone, as many as in 2022 to 2024 combined. The draft strategy says “The paper and Packaging Sector accounts for the largest number of Producers and PROs registered.” The webinar series may count only registrations made from 2022, which could explain part of the gap, since the existing-producer deadline fell in November 2021; SPI has not yet confirmed this.

The targets: year 5 of 5

Paragraph 7 of GN 1187 applies the Annexure 1 targets for five years from scheme implementation. DFFE’s own table puts those five years at 2022 to 2026 (Exhibit 9), which matches MetPac-SA’s description of 2024 as year three.

Annexure 1 also sets recycling, recycled content and reuse targets. Glass carries reuse targets by drink type, from 1% to 5% for food and pharmaceutical glass to 17% to 21% for beer bottles, and PET beverage bottles carry recycled content targets rising from 10% to 20%, on SPI’s reading of the lawlibrary.org.za text of the substituted Annexure. The table text there is unformatted, so SPI has not yet confirmed every recycling and recycled content percentage against a clean gazette copy and uses only the collection line, which DFFE published itself, for the analysis above.

What follows 2026 is open. SPI has not yet confirmed any DFFE notice setting targets for 2027 onwards. The draft National Waste Management Strategy 2026 proposes landfill diversion of 40% within 5 years, 50% within 10 and at least 60% within 15, and would count a deposit refund system toward producers’ obligations only for packaging that has missed its EPR collection and recycling targets (Gazette 53894). Packaging Gateway reported on 25 February 2026 that the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, speaking at the Polyco 2026 conference on 20 February, stressed meeting annual targets for every packaging category.

Performance against targets: what the PROs report

Three packaging PROs have published results that can be set against the DFFE targets for the same year (Exhibit 10).

The Department’s own view is more cautious. Its 14 May 2026 presentation said some identified products are approaching or achieving their targets, but listed among its challenges that some published targets are rarely met and that the volumes placed on the market do not match those collected and recycled. SPI has not yet confirmed a DFFE table of performance by product.

Enforcement: from audit to prison

SPI sets out the sanctions as a five-step ladder, from the mildest tool to the most severe (Exhibit 11). The order is SPI’s; the powers are the Department’s under the regulations.

Under regulation 13(1), a person convicted of an offence under the regulations is liable to imprisonment for a period not exceeding 15 years, an appropriate fine, or both (lawlibrary.org.za). No rand amount is set in the regulations. The offence list in regulation 12 covers registration (4(1) and (2)), every duty regulation (5, 5A, 5B and 6), the fee rules (7(1) to (7) and 7A), the reporting rules (8(1)(a) to (e) and 8(2)(a) to (e)), regulation 9(3), PRO registration (10) and PRO form (11). The Department’s own processing duty in regulation 4(3) is not an offence.

The 2023 draft amendments (Notice No. 3388, Gazette 48527, 5 May 2023) proposed to hold producers liable for published targets and to deal with free riders (gov.za, 9 May 2023). SPI has not yet confirmed that those provisions were made. If they are, missing a target would become a direct liability rather than a ground for review under regulation 9.

What the threshold costs: the 10-tonne producer

The threshold is low enough that the fee at the line is small, and the compliance work is the larger cost. Exhibit 12 prices 10 tonnes a year, the point at which a business becomes a producer, at each PRO’s latest published rate.

By SPI’s calculation, Petco’s shrink sleeve rate is 82 times Fibre Circle’s packaging paper rate, so the same 10 tonnes can cost R149.50 or R12,310.00 depending on material. The point for a producer near the threshold is that the fee is rarely the deciding cost; registration, data collection, the life cycle assessment and the labelling duties in regulation 5 apply in full from the first tonne above 10.

Scenarios: one PET line from the threshold to 1,000 tonnes

Exhibit 13 shows how the fee and the PRO’s administration allowance scale for a producer of PET beverage bottles, holding Petco’s 2026 rate.

The fee scales in a straight line, but the compliance work does not: the duties in Exhibit 6 cost about the same whether a producer places 10 tonnes or 1,000. SPI analysis: at the low case the regulation 5 duties probably cost more than the fee itself, which is why PRO membership that includes life cycle, labelling and B-BBEE support can be worth more to a small producer than buying each service separately.