EU Compliance & Shipping
EU market: two deadlines have just passed, and both land on your pack.
PPWR has been in application since 12 August 2026. Regulation (EU) 2025/40 entered into force on 11 February 2025 and has applied across every Member State since 12 August 2026. For the first time, the packaging carries legal obligations of its own, separate from the cosmetic inside it — a Declaration of Conformity with supporting technical documentation, EPR registration in every Member State you sell into, restrictions on substances of concern including PFAS, and minimum recycled content in plastic packaging. Harmonised labelling phases in through 2028; recycling targets through 2030.
The PPWR clause that catches beauty brands is the one about empty space. Packaging must be minimised — no unnecessary material, no empty volume. That is precisely the trap in a premium thick-wall jar: a jar sold as 200 ml that holds barely half of it is exactly the shape the regulation is aimed at. We measure true internal capacity against nominal size before you commit to a mould, because that difference is now a compliance question as well as a cost question.
The fragrance allergen list grew from 26 to 82 substances on 31 July 2026. Under Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1545, any of the 82 allergens present above 0.001% in a leave-on product or 0.01% in a rinse-off product must now be declared individually. New products placed on the EU market must already comply; products that were on the market before that date have until 31 July 2028. The consequence for packaging is blunt: a longer ingredient list needs more label. On a 15 ml serum that is a design decision, not a typesetting one — and it is far cheaper made before artwork is signed off than after a print run is paid for.
Materials and factories. We source materials compliant with EU plastics regulation (EU 10/2011) and REACH, and check your chosen format against PPWR recycled-content, recyclability and reusability requirements — including mono-material, PCR and refillable options. Partner factories operate to ISO 22716 / GMP standards with material certificates supplied for your records.
The label itself, under Regulation 1223/2009. Your Responsible Person's name and EU address, the INCI list in descending order, batch code, period-after-opening or best-before, nominal content and country of origin all have to fit on the pack. We size the label area against that list before the format is chosen, rather than discovering at artwork stage that the decoration you wanted has nowhere to go.
Shipping. Consolidated sea and air freight to major EU ports with export documentation handled, plus honest door-to-door lead times so your launch date is a plan rather than a hope.
One thing worth saying plainly. In every market we serve, the compliance burden that lands on the packaging is label real estate — not the container. PPWR is the first real exception to that rule, and even there the question we can answer for you is a physical one: does this format hold what it claims, and does the label have room for what your market requires. We are a packaging sourcing partner, not your regulatory adviser, and we will not pretend otherwise.