Steel pays EUR 5 to EUR 522 a tonne across nine euro EPR tables, and a wood pallet can cost nothing, a tenth of the rate or the full rate

Nine tables, two materials

Every scheme here publishes a steel line. Wood is less tidy: some schemes price it as its own household line, some fold it into a wider group, and some price it only as industrial packaging. Exhibit 2 shows the household wood lines that SPI could match to a scheme’s own table.

Belgium’s figure is not a misprint. Fost Plus lists wood, code 016-01, in its valorised group with other materials such as textile and rubber, at the same EUR 4.4190 per kg as non-valorised and obstructive packaging, while cork has its own line at EUR 1.2325 (Fost Plus Green Dot rates 2026). France takes the opposite route. Citeo says household packaging made of untreated wood from sustainably managed forests is not recycled because energy recovery is more relevant, and so aligns the wood and cork rate with paper and board, at 25.81 euro cent per kg (Citeo guide 2026).

The fee bases differ as much as the rates. Repak’s EUR 64.76 for steel and EUR 14.18 for wood are the brand holder or importer share; manufacturers and converters add EUR 1 each and retailers EUR 2, so the full chain pays EUR 68.76 and EUR 18.18 per tonne (Repak 2026 fees sheet). CONAI’s contribution is charged at the first transfer of the packaging, so it reaches a filler as a line on a converter’s invoice. SPV’s urban values apply to packaging that reaches the municipal stream and its non-urban values to the rest. Exhibit 3 sets out every steel line SPI read.

The wood lines, including cork

Exhibit 4 sets out the wood and cork lines. Cork matters for wine and spirits stoppers, and Belgium and Luxembourg price it on its own line.

Two of these lines move a lot in percentage terms on small numbers. SPV’s non-urban wood more than doubles, from EUR 2.20 to EUR 4.50 per tonne, and Ecoembes wood rises 36.4% to EUR 30. Austria is the only scheme in the set that charges household and commercial wood the same EUR 0.020 per kg, while its ferrous metal lines differ 6.4 times by stream (ARA 2026).

Cork follows the steel pattern of 2027 rises. Fost Plus raises cork 57.2%, from EUR 1.2325 to EUR 1.9373 per kg, and Valorlux 18.9%, from EUR 0.2238 to EUR 0.2662. Citeo prices cork with wood at 25.81 euro cent per kg, so a Belgian cork stopper pays 4.8 times a French one in 2026 (Fost Plus rates page; Valorlux 2026 and 2027; Citeo guide 2026).

For Luxembourg household wood, SPI has not yet confirmed the line. Valorlux’s 2026 table lists industrial wood (PV18) at EUR 0.0145 per kg and other recoverable packaging (PV14) at EUR 1.3973, and does not name household wood in either label. A brand selling wooden household packs in Luxembourg should ask Valorlux which line applies before the 2026 declaration.

How the year moved

Exhibit 5 shows the change in each steel and wood line, inside each scheme, for the two steps SPI could read.

The Dutch steel line shows a longer arc. Verpact’s Beleid 2026 table lists other metals at EUR 0.230 per kg in 2021 and 2022, EUR 0.250 in 2023, EUR 0.330 in 2024 and EUR 0.360 in 2025 and 2026, a 56.5% rise over five years, and its tariff page keeps EUR 0.360 for 2027 (Verpact Beleid 2026; Verpact Tarieven). Dutch wood went the other way: EUR 0.020 in 2021 and 2022, EUR 0.010 in 2023 and EUR 0.015 since 2024.

Italy’s wood path is set in two CONAI board decisions. The first moved wood from EUR 9 to EUR 10 per tonne from 1 January 2026, as part of an economic and financial path the Rilegno consortium had largely foreseen (CONAI, 7 July 2025). The second, announced on 2 July 2026, takes wood to EUR 12 from 1 January 2027, alongside glass from EUR 40 to EUR 48 (CONAI, 2 July 2026). Italian steel has stayed at EUR 5 per tonne throughout 2026.

For France, SPI has not yet confirmed a 2027 steel value in Citeo’s own 2027 document, so Exhibits 3 and 5 leave it out.

Cans and aerosols: one steel line, with deposits and design rules around it

Steel food cans, paint tins, aerosols, crown caps and twist-off lids all pay the scheme’s steel line. RICREA, Italy’s steel packaging consortium, groups its material into open top cans for food, general line containers for paints, solvents, oils and aerosols, drums of 50 to 300 litres, closures, aerosol cans and strapping, and reports 435,539 tonnes of steel packaging sent for recycling in Italy in 2024, an 86.4% rate (Il sistema RICREA). Steel for Packaging Europe reports that 82% of steel packaging placed on the European market was really recycled in 2023 (Steel for Packaging Europe, 22 April 2026).

Exhibit 6 shows where the schemes add a rule on top of the steel line. The point is that steel’s modulation, like aluminium’s, sits in thresholds, deposits and maluses on other materials, not in a steel bonus.

Citeo’s aerosol example is the only aerosol-specific item SPI found. Its 2025 and 2026 guides both use the compaction of a metal aerosol, with the can’s weight cut from 36 g to 27 g, to show a 25% reduction bonus (Citeo guides 2025 and 2026). The lighter can pays less on weight and then earns the bonus, so the saving compounds; Exhibit 11 prices it.

The closure rule is the steel item most likely to surprise a glass packer. Citeo applies a 100% malus to glass packaging fitted with a mechanical closure in austenitic stainless steel, and recommends magnetic steels such as grade 430 from the ferritic family instead (Citeo guide 2026). A swing-top bottle can therefore double its glass fee because of the wire, not the glass. The glass piece covers the glass side of that rule.

Steel drinks cans follow aluminium cans into deposits. Verpact’s tariff page says the aluminium and other metals tariffs no longer apply to deposit cans from 1 April, and Re-turn’s scope covers PET bottles and aluminium or steel cans between 150 ml and 3 litres (Verpact Tarieven; Re-turn producer page). SPI’s aluminium piece prices the per-can fees; for a steel can, which weighs more than an aluminium can of the same size, the per-tonne equivalent of a per-can fee is lower.

Pallets and crates: four treatments

Pallets, crates, drums and intermediate bulk containers are mostly industrial or commercial packaging, and much of it is reused many times. The schemes treat that reuse in very different ways, and Exhibit 7 sorts them into four groups. This is the organising frame for the rest of the piece.

Treatment A, no fee. The Dutch rule is a definition. Verpact’s Beleid 2026 lists logistics aids in subparagraph 3.1.3, among them pallets including collars, pallet boxes and interleaves used with a pallet, and crates with a capacity of 8 litres or more, as well as intermediate bulk containers, roll containers, drums and jerrycans. No waste management contribution is owed on a logistics aid. A single-use logistics aid still has to be reported, and a reusable one must be part of a reuse system the producer can show exists (Verpact Beleid 2026). For other reusable packaging, Verpact charges a reuse tariff of EUR 0.015 per kg, levied once, however often the packaging is used (Verpact Beleid 2026; Verpact Tarieven).

Treatment B, discount. Italy prices reuse through the weight base. Under the circular of 30 October 2025, used, repaired or selected pallets put back on the market by pallet operators pay the contribution on 10% of their weight, whatever document they came with, and from 1 January 2026 the same reduction covers empty pallets imported for the importer’s own use but not pallets imported full. New pallets built for multi-year reuse get the same reduction if they belong to a monitored prevention and reuse system checked by CONAI and Rilegno, with validated specifications, unique marking and third-party inspection (CONAI and Rilegno, 30 October 2025).

Repairs have their own rule. A repairer of third-party pallets pays only on the wood added: 10% of that weight for pallets built to coded specifications within known controlled circuits and 100% in other cases. An optional simplified procedure uses a standard 2.39 kg of new wood per repaired pallet, and pallets that can no longer be repaired and go to recovery or disposal pay nothing (CONAI and Rilegno, 30 October 2025).

Treatment C, full rate. Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal price commercial wood by weight. ARA charges EUR 0.020 per kg for commercial wood, the same as household wood; Valorlux EUR 0.0145 for industrial wood (PV18) in both 2026 and 2027; Repak EUR 14.18 per tonne for the brand holder; and SPV EUR 0.0045 per kg for non-urban wood (ARA 2026 and 2027; Valorlux 2026 and 2027; Repak 2026; SPV 2026). None of these tables names pallets or crates, and SPI has not yet confirmed whether any of them offers a reuse reduction outside the tariff sheet.

Treatment D, elsewhere. Citeo, Fost Plus and Ecoembes publish household tables. In France, the arrêtés of 2 December 2025, published on 18 December 2025, set the cahier des charges for professional packaging, under which reused packaging may get a conditional exemption and reusable pallets must be separated from other wood packaging at public waste sites (Banque des Territoires, 18 December 2025). In Belgium, industrial packaging is Valipac’s remit (VBO-FEB). Ecoembes’s 2026 commercial packaging option prices kilograms reaching commercial businesses at EUR 0 under integrated management (Ecoembes Precios 2026). SPI has not yet confirmed a pallet rate in any of these three.

The EU layer is arriving on top. Article 29 of Regulation (EU) 2025/40 requires operators that use transport packaging to make at least 40% of it reusable within a re-use system from 1 January 2030, with stricter rules for pallets, crates, intermediate bulk containers and drums moved between an operator’s own sites or within one Member State, as SPI’s tracker entry for PR-EU-006 sets out. Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2026/429 of 25 February 2026, in force from 26 May 2026, exempts some operators that use pallet wrapping and strapping from the full reuse requirements for those formats (EUR-Lex).

Worked example 1: 10 tonnes of household steel

To show what the steel line does to a portfolio, SPI priced 10 tonnes of household steel packaging: 6 tonnes of food cans, 3 tonnes of aerosols and 1 tonne of closures. Because every scheme prices these on its steel line, the split does not change the total, but it matters for the aerosol scenario in Exhibit 11. The mix is an SPI assumption, not a market average.

Belgium (Fost Plus). 10 x 186.4 = EUR 1,864 in 2026 and 10 x 331 = EUR 3,310 in 2027, EUR 1,446 more for the same tonnage. A Belgian food brand that also sells aluminium cans sees the gap between the two metals widen, since thick aluminium falls to EUR 39.90 per tonne on the same 2027 table (Fost Plus rates page).

Luxembourg (Valorlux). 10 x 39.6 = EUR 396 in 2026 and EUR 599 in 2027, up 51.3%, after a 46.1% rise in 2026. Over two years the line more than doubles, from EUR 27.10 to EUR 59.90 per tonne.

Portugal (SPV). 10 x 521.9 = EUR 5,219 in the urban flow. The same 10 tonnes in the non-urban flow, such as steel drums sold to industry, cost 10 x 7 = EUR 70. The classification is worth 74.6 times the bill.

Austria (ARA). 10 x 450 = EUR 4,500 as household packaging and 10 x 70 = EUR 700 as commercial packaging. ARA refers users to section 13h of the Waste Management Act for the definition of each stream (ARA 2026).

Ireland (Repak). 10 x 64.76 = EUR 647.60 for the brand holder and EUR 687.60 across the chain. The line is for recycled steel outside the deposit; the 2026 sheet shows no non-recycled steel row.

Worked example 2: 250 tonnes of new wood pallets

SPI priced 10,000 new wood pallets at an assumed 25 kg each, 250 tonnes, placed on the market as commercial or industrial packaging. Exhibit 9 adds the Italian variants for reused and repaired pallets.

Italy (CONAI). New pallets cost 250 x 10 = EUR 2,500 in 2026 and 250 x 12 = EUR 3,000 in 2027. The same 10,000 pallets put back on the market after selection pay on 25 tonnes, EUR 250 and EUR 300. Repairing 10,000 third-party pallets under the simplified procedure charges 23.9 tonnes of new wood, EUR 239 in 2026, or EUR 23.90 if the pallets are built to coded specifications in a controlled circuit.

Netherlands (Verpact). Pallets are logistics aids, so the contribution is EUR 0. If the pallets were single-use, the producer still reports them, and a reusable pallet needs a reuse system the producer can show.

Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal. 250 x 20 = EUR 5,000 at ARA; 250 x 14.18 = EUR 3,545 for the Repak brand holder and 250 x 18.18 = EUR 4,545 across the chain; 250 x 14.5 = EUR 3,625 at Valorlux; 250 x 4.5 = EUR 1,125 in SPV’s non-urban flow.

Worked example 3: 20 tonnes of household wooden boxes

The third example is the one where wood is most expensive: wooden boxes and crates that reach households, such as cheese boxes, fruit crates sold with the produce and gift boxes. SPI priced 20 tonnes in each household table.

Belgium (Fost Plus). 20 x 4,419 = EUR 88,380, 17.1 times the French bill and 441.9 times the Italian one. In Belgium a wooden box pays the same per kg as obstructive packaging, so the choice between wood and paper and board, at EUR 150.30 per tonne, is a 29.4-fold difference in fee per kg (Fost Plus rates page).

France (Citeo). 20 x 258.1 = EUR 5,162, the same as 20 tonnes of paper and board. Citeo also publishes a wine and spirits sector tariff with a per-unit price for wooden cases, such as a one-bottle wooden case, so a wine brand should check which tariff it declares under (Citeo guide 2026).

Italy (CONAI). 20 x 10 = EUR 200 in 2026 and EUR 240 at EUR 12 in 2027.

Scenarios: stream, reuse and weight

Three assumptions carry most of the uncertainty in these examples: which stream a pack is declared in, how much of a pallet fleet is reused, and how much an aerosol weighs. Exhibit 11 moves each one inside one scheme at a time.

SPI calculation: for the Citeo aerosols, 3 tonnes at 36 g is about 83,333 cans. At 27 g the same cans weigh 2.25 tonnes, so the weight part falls from 3 x 64.9 = EUR 194.70 to 2.25 x 64.9 = EUR 146.03, and a 25% bonus on that takes it to EUR 109.52, 43.8% below the starting point. Citeo applies bonuses to the total per-unit contribution, including per-unit parts, so the real saving would be somewhat larger; SPI has priced the weight part only.

For Italian pallets, the base case uses the market’s own split. With 37.5% of the 250 tonnes reused, 156.25 tonnes pay EUR 12 and 93.75 tonnes pay on 10% of their weight, so the 2027 bill is 1,875 + 112.50 = EUR 1,987.50, 33.8% below an all-new fleet.

The 2027 step adds to the steel cases. On published 2027 lines, 10 tonnes of steel cost EUR 1,446 more in Belgium and EUR 203 more in Luxembourg than in 2026, and the same in Spain, the Netherlands and Austria. For wood, only Italy’s change is confirmed, adding EUR 500 to the new-pallet case.

The gaps in this view

2027 for France, Portugal and Ireland. SPI has not yet confirmed 2027 steel and wood values for Citeo, SPV or Repak in the schemes’ own tables; CONAI has published only the 2027 wood and glass changes.

Spain’s labels. The Ecoembes PDFs print values without readable material labels for steel and wood, so SPI matched them by position, and the 2026 values agree with SPI’s fee data. SPI has not yet confirmed the 2027 labels.

Industrial packaging. The pallet rates of the French professional packaging schemes, Valipac in Belgium and the Spanish industrial packaging schemes are not priced here. Nor are reuse reductions outside the tariff sheets in Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal.

Luxembourg household wood. SPI has not yet confirmed whether Valorlux places household wood in PV14, PV15 or another line.