Kenya's packaging EPR runs on a KSh 150 border fee and PRO fees under review, while South Africa's PROs publish per-tonne levies against legal targets

Kenya: the legal stack

Kenya’s packaging rules come from two statutes 23 years apart and three instruments made under them. Exhibit 2 sets them out with their gazette references. The tracker holds two of them, PR-KE-001 (the bag ban) and PR-KE-002 (the EPR Regulations), on the Kenya page of the SPI Regulation Tracker.

The Act. Section 2 defines a producer as an entity that introduces goods, products and packaging into Kenya by authorised means, which covers manufacturing, importing, converting, filling and rebranding. Section 13 says every producer bears EPR obligations for the pollution and environmental impact of what it sells and the waste it creates, met alone or through a compliance scheme, and it gave the Cabinet Secretary two years from commencement to make regulations (Kenya Law). The Regulations commenced on 4 November 2024, a little over three months after that two-year mark on SPI’s count from 26 July 2022.

The Regulations. Regulation 3 states three aims: extending responsibility across a product’s life cycle, a framework for mandatory schemes, and the polluter pays principle. Regulation 5 lists ten producer duties, from setting up a take-back scheme, which may include a deposit refund, to design for reuse and recycling, life cycle assessment and consumer information. Registration is on Form C with the Registrar of Companies certificate and a list of goods and packaging; NEMA has 14 days to decide and issues a Form D certificate (reg. 7). Existing producers had six months from commencement to apply (reg. 23), which SPI reads as 4 May 2025.

Import control. Regulation 6 makes the border the checkpoint. The importer pays the First Schedule fee at importation and applies on Form A; NEMA decides within 14 days and issues a Form B certificate that forms part of clearance and inspection papers. NEMA’s EPR page says importers obtain these certificates through the National Electronic Single Window System.

PROs. A collective scheme applies on Form E with the documents listed in regulation 11(2), including a member register, fee structure, EPR plan, budget, audited accounts and a memorandum limiting the company to EPR business. Approval lasts at most four years and is renewable (reg. 12), and a producer may change scheme only at the start of a contract year after three months’ notice, copied to NEMA (reg. 11). The four-year plan must cover 100% of declared volumes, fee modulation, eco-design, traceability and plans to meet national reuse, recycling and recovery targets (reg. 16).

Before the Regulations. NEMA’s public notice of 30 August 2023 already told producers to submit an EPR plan within two months, listing twelve items for individual schemes, from products and volumes to county collection points and contracts with licensed transporters and recyclers, and four items for members of a collective scheme. The 2024 Regulations gave that request a legal form.

Kenya: what producers pay

Kenya’s fee picture has three layers, and only two are fixed. Exhibit 3 shows the amounts set in law.

The third layer is the scheme fee itself. Regulation 18 says members pay fees calculated on the same parameters for every producer in a scheme, varying with quantities, source segregation, recyclability, secondary raw material markets, hazardous additives, environmental footprint and compliance. The scheme then remits 5% of the membership fees it collects to NEMA by 10 February each year for monitoring, inspection and audits.

The step at 5,000 kg is the feature to plan around. One extra kilogram moves a member from KES 5,000 to KES 50,000, a tenfold rise, so a producer near the line should check its declared weight before the annual renewal. Above 20,000 kg the fee is flat, which makes it small per kilogram for any large brand.

The review. Kenyan press reported on 26 June 2026 that NEMA’s Director General had directed a reassessment of EPR fees, saying the framework KEPRO used did not comply with the Regulations, and that KEPRO must consult manufacturers and importers, align its fees with L.N. 176 and hold a validation workshop on a new structure (Kenyans.co.ke). SPI has not yet confirmed the text of the NEMA directive or the outcome of the workshop.

Kenya: targets and the KEPRO plan

L.N. 176 refers to national targets for reuse, recycling and recovery in regulations 13 and 16 without stating them. SPI’s Kenya data records NEMA’s FAQ of 15 March 2025 as telling PROs to collect 100% of what members introduce where no national target exists. KEPRO’s own plan fills the gap for plastics (Exhibit 5).

The plan puts national plastic packaging placed on the market at 224,000 tonnes (a 2022 estimate) and says post-consumer plastic collected is under 50%, so KEPRO members’ 23,000 tonnes are about a tenth of the national figure on SPI’s division. Figures cited at the Kenya Plastics Pact roadmap launch put total waste at about 22,000 tonnes a day, roughly 20% of it plastic, and plastic waste at 0.5 to 1.3 million tonnes a year with about 8% recycled (Kenya News Agency, page undated). The two sources measure different things, packaging placed on the market against all plastic waste, and SPI does not reconcile them.

Kenya: the KSh 150 question

The KSh 150 per item fee is the largest open number in Kenyan packaging compliance. The First Schedule applies it to all five product groups, and regulation 6 ties it to the import certificate. What the Regulations do not say is what one item is.

Citizen Digital reported on 24 March 2026 that a court had lifted conservatory orders that had shielded manufacturers from the charge, so firms must pay while the full case is heard, and that the Kenya Association of Manufacturers wants the definition of a unit item in categories one and two clarified. SPI’s Kenya data records NEMA’s FAQ as saying the counting basis will be settled with the Kenya Revenue Authority and KenTrade. SPI has not yet confirmed the court, case number or ruling text. Exhibit 6 shows why the definition matters.

The spread is 1,200 times from low to high. At the high reading a 24-unit carton carries KSh 3,600 of EPR fee before any PRO charge. That is why the counting rule, more than the rate, decides the cost for importers of packaged goods.

Kenya: the bag ban and the 2024 plastic packaging licence

The bag ban predates EPR by seven years. Gazette Notice No. 2356 of 2017, dated 28 February 2017 and printed on 14 March 2017, used sections 3 and 86 of Cap. 387 to ban the use, manufacture and importation of carrier bags (with handles) and flat bags (without handles) for commercial and household packaging, from six months after its date (FAOLEX copy). NEMA dates the effect to 28 August 2017 and halted non-woven polypropylene bags from 31 March 2019 until the Kenya Bureau of Standards gazettes a quality standard. The Environment and Land Court upheld the notice on 22 June 2018 (PR-KE-001).

NEMA sorts bags into four categories: carrier bags, banned with no exemption; flat bags, allowed only as primary industrial packaging with a clearance letter; garbage and hazardous waste liners, exempt under labelling and take-back conditions; and duty-free bags, which travellers must leave at entry points. It reports more than 500 arrests and 300 prosecutions in the first two years, and fines of KSh 50,000 to KSh 150,000 (NEMA, undated anniversary statement).

The newer layer is L.N. 181 of 2024. It applies to carrier bags, flat bags and plastic film up to 250 microns, including plastic packaging on imported products, and requires NEMA authorisation to make, import, export, possess, use or offer them for sale (reg. 6). An application on Form A must include an EPR plan and the Third Schedule fee; NEMA decides within 21 days, and the licence lasts twelve months (regs. 7 to 9). Licence holders must keep an EPR plan and file an annual EPR report (regs. 15 and 16), label products with resin codes and, where applicable, recycled content, and meet a recycled content floor of 30% where recycled content is required (regs. 18 and 20). Importers declare quantities and purpose at the port of entry (reg. 23). Offences carry the penalties of section 144 of Cap. 387, which SPI’s data records as KSh 2 million to KSh 4 million or one to four years.

South Africa: the Section 18 machinery

South Africa built its system from one statute. The National Environmental Management: Waste Act, 2008 lets the Minister identify products for EPR under section 18 and make regulations under section 69. The EPR Regulations, GN R1184 of 2020, are the general machinery; the paper and packaging notice, GN 1187 of 2020, is the section 18 identification that names products, producers and targets. The tracker holds both as PR-ZA-001 on the South Africa page of the SPI Regulation Tracker.

Who is the producer. Paragraph 1 of GN 1187 catches anyone placing more than 10 tonnes a year of identified products on the market. The producer is the South African brand owner, manufacturer or converter; for a foreign brand, the licensed agent or else the importer on the bill of lading; and for products that are neither, the retailer. Paragraph 3 excludes plastic carrier and flat bags, and the packaging definition leaves out timber and textile packaging, bulk shipping containers, and plastic pallets and bulk containers over 1,000 litres. Paragraph 4 covers paper and paper packaging, plastic packaging (polyolefins, PET, polystyrene, PVC, vinyls and multilayer), biodegradable and compostable packaging, single-use products, glass, and tinplate and aluminium.

The start. The Department postponed implementation to 5 May 2021 after producers asked for more input, and set 5 November 2021 as the date by which existing producers and PROs had to register (gov.za, 19 January 2021). Paragraph 6 of GN 1187 used the same date for submitting a scheme or setting up a PRO; new producers have six months to submit a scheme or three months to join one.

Duties beyond the fee. Regulation 5 of GN R1184 asks producers to set up or join a PRO that covers the whole value chain, carry out a life cycle assessment within five years, develop a broad-based black economic empowerment transformation charter within two years, apply environmental labels under SANS 14021 and SANS 14024 within three years, and run take-back where a notice requires it. Regulation 5A adds that PROs must compensate registered waste pickers through a collection service fee from November 2022.

The fee rules. Regulation 7 has the PRO and its members propose the fee, which the Minister approves with the concurrence of the Minister responsible for finance; GN 5520 of 2024 rewrote that submission step. The fee must rest on net cost recovery and differ by product category, taking weight, recyclability, collection and treatment costs into account, and the current fee must always be on the PRO’s website. Administration costs are capped at 20% of revenue in calendar year 1, 15% in year 2 and 12% in year 3. Regulation 13 provides for imprisonment of up to 15 years, a fine, or both, and lets the Department revoke registrations or move a producer to another scheme.

Targets. Paragraph 7 of GN 1187 applies the Annexure 1 targets for five years from scheme implementation. They cover collection, recycling, recycled content, reuse and energy recovery for each class. SPI reads the window from 5 May 2021 as ending in 2026; SPI has not yet confirmed whether the Department has gazetted targets for the next period, nor every Annexure 1 percentage from a clean copy of the table.

South Africa: reporting to the DFFE

The reporting calendar in regulation 8 is fixed and repeats each year (Exhibit 8).

The reports go to the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) and the data to the South African Waste Information System. The annual external audit covers performance against targets, fee allocation, finance, governance and jobs created. The Department may audit any scheme.

South Africa: the PROs' published levies

Packaging PROs in South Africa are organised by material. Petco covers PET and, since 2023, liquid board; Polyco covers the other plastics; Fibre Circle covers paper. Each publishes a fee table, and each is in rand per tonne.

The liquid board rise fits that history. A carton scheme that started in 2023 and quadrupled collection in two years is paying for collection it did not have before; SPI does not have Petco’s own explanation for the 2026 rate. Exhibit 10 sets out the other two PROs’ tables.

Two features stand out across Exhibits 9 and 10. Plastic fees are 17 to 82 times the packaging paper fee, on SPI’s division of Polyco’s R260 and Petco’s R1,231 by Fibre Circle’s R14.95. And liquid board appears in two tables: R850 at Petco for 2026 and R532.89 at Fibre Circle for 2025. The years differ, so SPI does not read the gap as a price comparison; it shows that a carton brand has more than one registered route.

The worked basket

SPI priced one 100-tonne basket of South African packaging through the latest table each PRO publishes (Exhibit 11). The basket is an SPI assumption, not a market average, and the years differ by PRO: Petco 2026, Fibre Circle 2025 and Polyco undated.

The basket averages R434.03 per tonne. Paper and board are 35% of the weight and 1.2% of the bill. PET bottles alone are over half of it. If the five tonnes of cartons were declared at Fibre Circle’s 2025 rate instead of Petco’s 2026 rate, the bill would be R41,817.70, R1,585.55 lower; SPI shows this only to size the line, not as a recommendation, because the two rates are from different years and each PRO’s scheme terms differ. The EPR fees per tonne piece prices comparable baskets in 14 other markets, each in its own currency.

Scenarios: Petco's 2027 lines

Petco has not published 2027 fees. Exhibit 12 asks what the three Petco lines in the basket would cost under three paths built from Petco’s own 2023 and 2026 tables.

Liquid board drives the spread. In the base case it adds R898.96 of the R1,450.45 rise; in the high case R3,307.53 of R4,995.56. A drinks or dairy brand with a carton line should therefore treat its carton fee, not its PET fee, as the uncertain number for 2027. The low case is the floor only if Petco holds rates, which it did not between 2023 and 2026.

A framework: the EPR maturity ladder

SPI places each country on a six-rung ladder drawn from what the law and the PROs publish (Exhibit 13). Each rung is a test a buyer can check; a market climbs it in order, because a later rung needs the earlier ones.

Deposit and the next layer

Neither country has a statutory deposit return system for packaging. Kenya’s Regulations let a producer’s take-back scheme include a deposit refund (reg. 5), and NEMA’s 2024 model records earlier voluntary refunds on returnable glass bottles (SPI Kenya data). South Africa’s draft strategy treats deposit refund systems as part of EPR, but would count a packaging deposit system toward producers’ EPR obligations only where they have missed their collection and recycling targets (draft NWMS 2026). The 2023 draft amendments also proposed bringing returnable packaging and deposit schemes inside EPR (gov.za, 9 May 2023). The draft strategy proposes landfill diversion of 40% within 5 years, 50% within 10 and at least 60% within 15, against about 10% of roughly 122 million tonnes diverted in the latest year. The deposit return piece shows how European systems sit beside EPR.