The UK's packaging producer responsibility scheme is live. Packlah tells you what it costs, per SKU, before your compliance scheme does. Live since April 2025, with RAM modulation from 2026 - we keep your numbers current as the scheme moves.
| Material | Tonnes | £/t | RAM | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper / board | 24.2 | £215 | Green | £4,872 |
| Plastic | 12.8 | £485 | Amber | £8,160 |
| Fibre composite | 8.4 | £455 | Amber | £4,628 |
| Glass | 18.1 | £240 | Green | £3,910 |
| Steel + alu | 4.6 | £350 | Green | £1,449 |
| Wood (pallets) | 26.4 | £45 | Green | £1,188 |
Extended Producer Responsibility is the principle that the businesses putting packaging on the market should pay for what happens to it at end of life. If you're a distributor supplying packaged goods to UK buyers, that means you.
Before April 2025, UK packaging compliance ran through the PRN and PERN system - an obligation calculated in tonnes and offset by buying recycling notes on the open market. pEPR replaced that with a direct fee model: you pay a rate per tonne of packaging you place on the market, by material category. There are eight categories: paper and board, plastic, glass, steel, aluminium, fibre composite, wood, and other. Rates are set by DEFRA and administered by PackUK. Current published base fees range from around £215 per tonne for paper and board up to £485 per tonne for plastic - rates are subject to change and Packlah flags updates as they're published.
From the 2026 scheme year, fees are modulated by recyclability. PackUK's Recyclability Assessment Methodology (RAM) grades each packaging format, and producers with more recyclable packaging pay lower fees. Producers with less recyclable packaging pay more. That makes your choice of format a financial decision as well as an environmental one.
Producer tiers determine your obligations. Below £1m turnover or below 25 tonnes of packaging placed on the UK market: exempt. At £1m or above and 25 tonnes or above, you're a small producer - annual submissions, reduced fees. At £2m or above and 50 tonnes or above, you're a large producer - bi-annual submissions, full fees, and modulation applies. Most large producers handle submissions through a compliance scheme such as Valpak, Biffpack, Veolia, or Clarity rather than reporting directly to PackUK.
EPR is not a rounding error. A mid-size distributor placing 200 tonnes of mixed packaging on the UK market could be looking at a five or six-figure annual fee. If that cost isn't in your customer rate sheets, it comes straight off your margin.
PPT was one material, one rate, one threshold. EPR is eight material categories, per-tonne fees that vary by format, recyclability modulation from 2026, and bi-annual submissions for large producers. Running that on a spreadsheet across hundreds of SKUs is where things go wrong.
The EPR obligation is calculated on packaging you have already placed on the market. If you haven't built the fee into your pricing, you'll be writing a cheque at the end of the period rather than collecting it throughout the year.
Every SKU in your catalogue carries its own material profile - paper, plastic, glass and so on - with weights per unit. Packlah uses that profile to calculate your EPR obligation at the SKU level, not just in aggregate. From 2026 you can flag recyclability inputs for each format so the RAM modulation is applied correctly rather than defaulting to the worst-case rate.
| Material | % wt | £/t base | RAM | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fibre composite | 88% | £455 | Green | £412 |
| Plastic - PLA lining | 12% | £485 | Amber | £122 |
| Total per tonne | £534 | |||
DEFRA and PackUK publish rate updates and scheme guidance on their own schedule. Packlah maintains a rate library that's updated when those change, with version history so any calculation you ran six months ago still shows the rates that were live at the time. No more downloading PDFs and manually updating a spreadsheet.
| Material | Was | Now | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper / board | £207 | £215 | +£8 |
| Plastic | £473 | £485 | +£12 |
| Fibre composite | £437 | £455 | +£18 |
| Steel | £310 | £305 | -£5 |
Knowing your EPR cost is half the job. The other half is getting it into your customer pricing without running bespoke calculations for every account. Packlah turns your per-SKU obligation into a recommended uplift figure - in pence per unit, per pallet, or as a percentage - so you can update rate sheets rather than start from scratch.
| SKU | Current | EPR uplift | New |
|---|---|---|---|
| EL-1247 | £0.42 | +£0.008 | £0.428 |
| EL-2103 | £0.31 | +£0.013 | £0.323 |
| EL-2204 | £0.18 | +£0.004 | £0.184 |
| EL-3018 | £0.58 | +£0.008 | £0.588 |
| Avg increase | +2.4% | ||
Packlah is not a compliance scheme and does not submit on your behalf. What it does is get your data into the shape that Valpak, Biffpack, Veolia, Clarity, or any other compliance scheme needs - and give you the audit trail to answer questions if the Environment Agency comes asking.
| Material | Tonnes | RAM band | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper / board | 12.1 | Green | £2,180 |
| Plastic | 6.4 | Amber | £4,080 |
| Fibre composite | 4.2 | Amber | £2,314 |
| Glass | 9.0 | Green | £1,955 |
| H2 total | £10,529 | ||