EPR producer definition: the US states and UK follow the brand, the EU the first sale, India all three

EPR producer definition: the six definitions side by side

Exhibit 2 is the core of this piece: the six definitions, with Germany’s reading, set against the six roles that decide most producer questions. Each cell states what the text says, with its provision. Where a text is silent, the cell says so, because silence is itself an answer; it usually means the role falls to the next rung of the chain.

Read down the columns and the three logics in the executive summary appear. The EU and German columns use the same verbs, make available and first, for every role: the brand matters for the manufacturer role, but the producer is found by asking who made the first supply on that national territory. The UK and US columns run as ladders: each rung applies only if the one above it is empty, or, in the UK, if the company above it is not a large producer. The Indian column has no ladder at all; three groups each carry their own target under clauses 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 (PR-IN-001).

The EU: Article 3(1)(15) and the first supply in each Member State

The PPWR has applied since 12 August 2026, having entered into force on 11 February 2025 (PR-EU-001). Its definitions sit in Article 3(1), and the Commission’s Notice C/2026/3084 of 10 June 2026 quotes them in full in its sections 2 to 4. SPI read the definitions there, because the HTML text of the Regulation on EUR-Lex serves the recitals reliably but not always the articles (PR-EU-001).

The lead-in to Article 3(1)(15) applies the definition irrespective of the selling technique, including distance contracts. The Commission reads making a product available directly to an end user online as making it available in the end user’s Member State, so a company with a web shop selling packaged goods to a consumer in another Member State is the producer there (Notice C/2026/3084, section 3). That is the rule behind the authorised representative duty in Article 45(3), which SPI’s Omnibus VIII piece follows through the Council and Parliament positions of October 2026.

Two neighbouring definitions shape the answer. The manufacturer under Article 3(1)(13)(a) is the person that has packaging or a packaged product designed or manufactured under its own name or trademark; under point (b), where the brand owner is a micro-enterprise with fewer than 10 employees and turnover or balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million, and its supplier is in the same Member State, the supplier becomes the manufacturer (Notice C/2026/3084, section 2). The importer under Article 3(1)(17) must be established in the Union; the Commission says a branch without legal personality cannot be one (section 4). SPI’s Directive to PPWR piece sets out how the manufacturer and producer roles split the conformity file and the EPR file; this piece stays with the producer.

The Commission also explains where the producer role lands geographically. It reads the definition as pointing to the Member State where the packaging becomes waste, and adds that fees already paid in one Member State are to be reimbursed if a distributor later first supplies the packaging in another (PR-EU-001, from Notice C/2026/3084).

Germany: from section 3(14) VerpackG to the PPWR

From 2019 to 2026 German packaging buyers worked with one sentence: under section 3(14) of the Verpackungsgesetz, the Hersteller was the distributor that first placed packaging on the market commercially, and anyone who commercially brought packaging into Germany also counted as Hersteller (buzer.de, unofficial consolidated text). That sentence no longer applies. Article 7 of the law of 13 July 2026, BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 207, repealed the VerpackG with effect from the end of 11 August 2026, and Article 1 of the same law enacted the VerpackDG (buzer.de).

The register authority, the Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister, explains how it applies the PPWR. A company whose name or brand is on the pack is treated as manufacturer and also as producer; for unbranded packaging the producer is found in the Member State where the packaging becomes waste, and the Zentrale Stelle says who is first in the domestic supply chain decides it. A foreign company is the producer only where it ships from abroad directly to an end user, private or commercial, and then needs an authorised representative if it has no German branch (Zentrale Stelle). SPI’s German packaging law piece covers the registration, system and deadline duties that follow.

A language point catches many readers. In the German text of the PPWR the manufacturer is the Erzeuger and the producer is the Hersteller, so the word that meant producer under the VerpackG still means producer, but its content now comes from Brussels (Ledger 69).

The UK: seven producer classes and the large producer pass-through

The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024, SI 2024/1332, were made on 11 December 2024 and cover all four UK nations (PR-GB-002). Part 2, Chapter 1 sets out who is a producer. Regulation 15 sets three conditions: the person must be established in the UK, fall into one or more of the classes, and carry out the class’s functions in the UK in the course of business, directly or through an agent. Where products are sold together as one sales unit, producer status is assessed for each product’s packaging and for the sales unit as a whole.

The design choice that sets the UK apart is the pass-through to a large producer. A brand owner that is not a large producer does not carry the obligation for its filled packaging when a packer/filler, an importer or a first UK owner is a producer for it; regulation 16(4) lists those exceptions, and regulations 17, 18 and 19 move the obligation to the larger party. Regulation 15 also tells a company how to judge whether its counterparty is large: use evidence for the year of supply if it has it, and otherwise treat the counterparty as large if it was registered as a large producer in the preceding year under these regulations or listed as one under the earlier packaging data reporting regulations for England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Regulation 20 is the clearest marketplace rule in the six definitions. The operator must control access to and the contents of the marketplace and be involved in all three of setting sale terms, processing payment and ordering or delivery. It is then the producer for packaging on items supplied by a non-UK supplier and received in the UK, and for unfilled packaging such suppliers sell to businesses that are not large producers of the filled pack.

Oregon, Colorado and California: three cascades, one PRO

The three US states with packaging EPR programmes running through Circular Action Alliance use cascades, but not identical ones (Exhibit 6). SPI’s US state EPR piece compares the fees, deadlines and programme plans across seven states; this section stays with the definitions.

Oregon’s law, in ORS chapter 459A, took effect on 1 January 2022, and producers had to be members of a PRO from 1 July 2025 (PR-US-002). Food serviceware gets its own rule, which the statute states in a single sentence.

DEQ adds a supply chain rule in its producer summary: if another party has registered as producer for all of a company’s covered products sold into Oregon, that company need not join the PRO itself (PR-US-002).

Colorado’s HB22-1355 writes almost the same ladder into C.R.S. 25-17-703(30), with publishers as producers of newspapers and magazines and the first distributor as producer of any other covered material. Neither Oregon nor Colorado names a franchisor or a retailer as such; a retailer appears only as a brand licensee, a shipper or a first distributor.

California’s SB 54, Chapter 75 of the Statutes of 2022, takes a different third step. Where no manufacturer owns or licenses the brand, the brand owner is the producer, or, if it is outside the state, its exclusive licensee in California; where neither exists, the producer is whoever sells, offers for sale or distributes the product into the state (PRC 42041(w)). The Assembly Natural Resources Committee’s analysis of the bill as amended on 26 June 2022 describes the same three tiers. Subdivision (ae) treats a third-party seller on an online marketplace as the retailer for its own transactions, not the marketplace operator, where the platform meets the criteria in (ae)(3).

India: three obligated groups and the MSME exclusion

India’s packaging EPR is Schedule II of the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, inserted by G.S.R. 133(E) of 16 February 2022 and revised by G.S.R. 237(E) of 31 March 2026 (PR-IN-001). The 2026 amendment changed targets, audits and several definitions, and added a definition of a seller of plastic raw material, but SPI found no change to the definitions of brand owner, producer or importer, or to clause 4 (MPCB copy of G.S.R. 237(E)).

The structure avoids double counting by deduction rather than by a ladder. A brand owner keeps records of packaging bought from registered producers and importers, and those quantities come off the seller’s obligation (clause 10.3, PR-IN-001). Registration is per packaging category and per state: an entity in more than two states registers with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and one in one or two states with the State Pollution Control Board, giving PAN, GST and company identification numbers (clauses 6.1, 6.5 and 6.6).

The small firm rule needs care. The 2022 text of clause 4(iii) excludes micro, small and medium enterprises from the brand owner group, while CPCB’s reply to the National Green Tribunal of 28 April 2025 lists only micro and small enterprises as excluded (PR-IN-001). SPI records the difference and does not resolve it; SPI’s India 2026 rules piece covers the targets that follow from registration.

Small producer thresholds, in each law's own terms

Exhibit 8 lists the size tests in each text in their own currency and unit. SPI does not rank them against one another across currencies.

Two details change the arithmetic. First, the UK test is cumulative and lagged: regulation 24 looks at turnover in the last financial year ending before 7 April of the previous year, with accounts available, and at tonnage supplied two years earlier, and a company counts all its producer classes without counting any item twice. Second, the US tests measure different things: California uses gross annual sales, Oregon gross revenue for the most recent fiscal year, and Colorado realised gross total revenue in the prior calendar year, excluding on-premises alcohol sales.

CalRecycle’s instruction for small firms shows that the exemption is not automatic.

Scenarios: the same firm at three sizes

The two tables below apply the tests in Exhibit 8 to illustrative firms, one currency at a time. They show how the texts sort a company; they are not a finding about any real company.

A framework: six seller archetypes and where each text points

The definitions are easier to use when read from the seller’s side. SPI groups sellers into six archetypes by route to market and reads each text for the role it points to (Exhibit 11). The archetypes are SPI’s; the cells summarise the text, and the answer for a real company turns on its contracts, its establishment and its size.

Archetype 1 is the easy case, and it is most of the market by volume. Archetypes 4 and 5 are where the texts diverge most, because each regime decided separately how far to reach beyond its borders. The EU reaches the foreign seller itself; the UK refuses to, and reaches the marketplace instead; the US states reach the importer and the shipper; India reaches the platform.