SPI Buyers Database: the public packaging targets of the largest brand owners and retailers

What the SPI Buyers Database is

The SPI Buyers Database is one of the SPI Trackers, alongside the SPI Regulation Tracker and the SPI EPR & Plastic Tax Calculator. It answers one question: what have the largest buyers of packaging publicly committed to, and what have they reported since? Three terms recur.

• Brand owner: a company that sells products under its own brands and specifies the packaging they are sold in, such as Unilever, PepsiCo or Kenvue. Retailers count as brand owners for their own-label ranges.
• Packaging target: a public, dated or undated commitment about packaging that the company has published in its own report, filing, website or press release. SPI records the wording as the company gives it.
• Status: where the target stands, based only on what the company reports (defined under Methodology).

It is a register of public commitments, not a sales lead list: no contacts, purchase volumes, supplier relationships or pack specifications.

What the database covers

The 42 companies were chosen for their size as packaging buyers across consumer end uses. The list is not complete for any market, and companies are added in each data release.

Companies by end use

Each company is tagged with every end use its packaging serves, so a company such as Dabur India (personal care, food and pharma) counts in three groups. Food and personal care are the largest groups, followed by beverage.

The end-use groups feed the SPI industry pages: SPI Intelligence for Food and Beverage, SPI Intelligence for Personal and Home Care, SPI Intelligence for Pharma and Healthcare and SPI Intelligence for Retail and E-commerce.

Companies by headquarters country

The United States has the most headquarters, followed by the United Kingdom and India. The Indian group (Dabur India, Hindustan Unilever, ITC Limited, Marico, Nestlé India and Tata Consumer Products) gives the database a view of a market where recycled-content obligations already apply to brand owners under PR-IN-002.

Headquarters are assigned by the SPI team from each company’s website or filings (SPI Buyers Database, 13 Oct 2026). Headquarters is not where obligations fall: a US company selling in Europe is bound by the PPWR like a French one.

Targets by type, status and year

Chart buy-v2 shows every target by type and status. Recyclability is the largest type; virgin plastic reduction, recycled content and the “Other” group follow close together. Reuse targets are rare, and only HEINEKEN and Carrefour give a reuse percentage with a deadline. The “Other” group holds commitments that do not fit one metric, such as Unilever’s goal to collect and process more plastic than it sells, Sanofi’s blister-free vaccine packaging and the plastic neutrality claims of ITC Limited and Nestlé India. Target years cluster at 2025 and 2030 (chart buy-v8), and many targets have no year at all, usually a direction such as “reduce virgin plastic versus 2019” with no number or date.

What a company profile contains

Each company has its own page at /data/packaging-buyers-database//. Every profile carries:

• Company facts: headquarters country, end uses, the materials named in its targets, website and the number of targets recorded.
• Every packaging target: the target wording, the target type, the deadline, the latest progress the company reports with its year, and the status.
• A short quote, the source link and its date for each target, from the company’s own report, filing or press release.

The enriched profile layout, designed first for the Colgate-Palmolive profile, adds a company overview from filings (for Colgate-Palmolive, net sales of USD 20.4 billion and about 33,600 employees in 2025, from its Form 10-K and results release), segments and brands, the packaging formats and materials the company itself reports using, further commitments and memberships, recent developments, and a list of data gaps. Two blocks are labelled SPI analysis because they are SPI’s reading, not sourced fact: regulatory exposure, which maps the company’s markets to SPI Regulation Tracker rule IDs, and supplier implications, which says where packaging demand is likely to move. Research files in the same structure are prepared for every company for the next data release.

How to filter and export

The companies table on this page has five controls, which can be combined:

1. Search by company name or keyword, for example “reuse” or “recycled PET”.
2. End use: food, beverage, personal care, home care, pharma and health, retail, foodservice, e-commerce, tobacco or other.
3. Material: plastic, paper and board, metal, glass, wood or composites, as named in the company’s targets.
4. Target type: recyclable, recycled content, less virgin plastic, less plastic overall, reuse, lighter packaging, responsible paper or other.
5. Headquarters country.

If a combination returns nothing, the page shows what removing each filter would give. The Download targets (CSV) link exports one line per target, with the quote and source, for the filters you have set. Please cite Strategic Packaging Insights (SPI) when you use the data.

A typical use: a PET bottle converter filters to beverage and recycled content, gets HEINEKEN, Diageo, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Keurig Dr Pepper and Nestlé, and reads each company’s recycled-content gap to 2030 or 2035 before a pitch.

Recycled content: targets and reported progress

Recycled content is the share of a company’s packaging, usually its plastic packaging, made from recycled material. Most targets specify post-consumer recycled (PCR) material, which comes from used packaging collected after consumer use, as opposed to pre-consumer factory scrap. The table lists every recycled-content target in the database; on the live page it can be sorted by any column.

Read with care: the figures are on different bases. HEINEKEN’s 48% covers bottles and cans and Diageo’s 47% covers all packaging, so both include glass and aluminium, where recycled shares are structurally higher. The company-wide plastic averages sit in a band from 3.7% (Mondelēz International) to 27% (Colgate-Palmolive), with Unilever at 25%, Carrefour at 24.0%, Nestlé at 20.6%, PepsiCo at 18% and Walmart at 10.7% globally. Marico’s 32.2% covers its non-food portfolio only. Reckitt reported 12% for 2024 against its 25% goal for 2025 and has not yet published the 2025 result; the target is shown as behind, and the SPI team’s 13 October 2026 check is updating it to not reported.

Virgin plastic reduction

A virgin plastic reduction target commits a company to use less plastic made from new fossil feedstock, measured against a baseline year. It can be met by using less plastic, by switching to recycled plastic, or by moving to other materials, so it is a broader lever than recycled content.

Three results stand out. Colgate-Palmolive missed a one-third cut by a single point (32%), while Unilever is one point short of its 2026 goal with a year to go. Nestlé missed its earlier one-third ambition for 2025 at 28%, and its current 2030 target of 12% to 17% against an adjusted 2018 baseline is already exceeded on the reported figure. Danone reports exactly its 2030 level (17%) five years early. Haleon reports 9% to June 2025 and says results to 30 September 2025 pass 10%, so it counts its 2025 goal as met. PepsiCo, which aims to cut absolute virgin tonnage by an average of 2% a year through 2030, reports a 6% reduction in 2025.

Recyclability, including rigid versus flexible

Recyclability targets commit a company to make its packaging “recyclable, reusable or compostable”, usually “by design”, meaning the pack is designed so that it can be recycled in practice where collection and sorting exist. It is the most common target type and the one with the most 2025 misses.

Rigid versus flexible

Only one company in the database reports recyclability separately for rigid and flexible plastic. Unilever’s Annual Report and Accounts 2025 gives 57% of its plastic packaging as reusable, recyclable or compostable: 75% of rigids and 15% of flexibles. Its target reflects the gap, with 100% due by 2030 for rigids and 2035 for flexibles. The only other rigid-specific target is Mondelēz International’s 25% cut in rigid virgin plastic by 2030, at 8.4% in 2025 against 11.5% for its plastic overall.

Reuse

Reuse means packaging designed to be refilled or used again in a system, such as returnable bottles, refill stations or reusable transit crates. It is the least common target type.

AB InBev, recorded under “Other”, reports returnable packaging at 40.4% in 2025 (AB InBev 2025 Annual Report).

2025 targets: met versus missed

The 2025 deadline was the first big test of the commitments brand owners made in the late 2010s. Of the targets due by 2025, 16 are reported as met, 19 as missed and 24 have no reported result yet.

The missed list includes large buyers in every end use: Walmart missed four 2025 targets (recyclability, two recycled-content goals and virgin plastic), Colgate-Palmolive two of three, and The Estée Lauder Companies three, including 98% FSC-certified cartons against 100%. Many 2025 results are not yet published because companies report a year in arrears; Reckitt, for example, reports packaging data a year late, and its latest figures are for 2024.

How buyer targets line up with regulation

Voluntary targets and legal requirements now point in the same direction, and in some markets the law has overtaken the pledge. The table maps each target type to rules in the SPI Regulation Tracker. Rule IDs link to the rule pages, each with its official source and an SPI note.

Key dates

Methodology

Company sources. Every target comes from the company’s own published material: annual reports, sustainability and impact reports, ESG indexes, stock-exchange and SEC filings (for example Alibaba Group’s Form 6-K exhibit and Dabur India’s BRSR filing on the NSE) and company press releases. Where a company reports for a parent group (Lidl with Kaufland under Schwarz Group, or Hindustan Unilever citing Unilever goals), the profile says so.

What SPI records. Wording, value and unit, deadline, baseline where stated, latest progress and year, a quote, the source and its date, and the status.

Recheck. The sources for every company were consulted again on 12 and 13 October 2026, and the database shows 13 October 2026 as its data date. Each profile shows its own check date. Corrections are logged on the corrections page, and the wider approach is set out in the SPI Methodology.

Status definitions.

In two cases, Carrefour’s packaging-removal and reuse pledges, the status is SPI’s reading of the reported figures against the pledge, and the profile says so.

What is not included. No contacts or named individuals, purchase volumes or spend, supplier relationships unless publicly announced, pack specifications, or prices. No third-party ratings or scores. No estimate or forecast of any company’s future progress.

Limitations

• Company-reported data. SPI does not audit the figures. They are what each company reports, on its own definitions.
• Different bases. Companies measure by weight, by SKU or by units, for all packaging or plastic only, for one region or globally, and over calendar or fiscal years. The charts note the scope where it differs, but figures are not directly comparable across companies.
• Reporting lag. Some companies report a year in arrears, so a 2025 result may not appear until late 2026.
• Coverage. The set is weighted towards large, listed, US and European groups with English-language reports.
• Assigned fields. Headquarters and end uses are assigned by the SPI team and not separately sourced.
• Between releases. Newer company figures are applied in the next data release; until then each profile shows the recorded figure and its date.

Where the SPI Buyers Database fits

Of SPI’s five stages, the database serves the first three: Discover which buyers in your end use target your material, Understand each one’s gap to its deadline, and Evaluate that gap against the SPI Regulation Tracker and SPI EPR & Plastic Tax Calculator. Decide and Implement are where SPI Consulting comes in.

For audience-specific views, see SPI Intelligence for Packaging Buyers, SPI Intelligence for Converters and SPI Intelligence for Manufacturers.

How SPI Consulting uses the database

The database is free and stays usable without any enquiry. Where a team needs more than the public record, SPI Consulting offers three kinds of work built on it:

• Buyer briefings under Packaging Market & Competitive Intelligence: a buyer group’s targets, gaps and deadlines mapped to the materials and formats you supply, with the opportunity assessed from public sources.
• Target and redesign options under Sustainable Packaging Strategy: for brand teams benchmarking their own targets against peers in the same end use.
• Regulatory exposure under Packaging Regulatory Intelligence: which rules apply to a buyer’s markets and what they cost. This is decision support, not legal advice.

To discuss a buyer group or a market, contact the SPI team. Pricing is on request.