How Packaging Innovation and Waste Reduction Are Changing Technical Roles

What pEPR did to the cost base

Since April 2025, packaging producers have funded the full net cost of managing household packaging waste. In the first assessment year the fees were flat, charged per tonne by material: £423 for plastic, £266 for aluminium, £259 for steel, £196 for paper and card, £192 for glass. For a site putting a few hundred tonnes of packaging on the market, that's a cost line that didn't exist two years ago.

From the 2026-27 assessment year the flat rate has gone and the disposal fee element is modulated by recyclability, graded through the Recyclability Assessment Methodology on a traffic-light system. PackUK's illustrative figures for plastic put green at around £415 a tonne, amber at £455 and red at £545.

Recyclability is now a line in the P&L

The gap between those three numbers is the part to pay attention to, because it widens. The modulation factor applied to red-rated packaging is 1.2 for 2026-27, 1.6 for 2027-28 and 2.0 for 2028-29. By the end of the decade, the disposal fee element on a red-rated pack will be double the amber equivalent.

A multi-layer film that scores red carries a recurring cost, and that cost rises every year you keep it. Reformulating the pack is now a commercial decision with a number attached, and the technical team is the only part of the business that can tell you what the number is.

The scale of it shows in what manufacturers are asking government for. In the FDF's Q2 2026 survey, 56% wanted the EPR scheme subsidised to reduce producer fees, putting it level with energy costs and behind only minimum wage increases on the list of asks.

The work that landed on the technical desk

None of this arrives as a neat project. It arrives as reporting.

You're submitting packaging data in kilograms, split by material, by whether it's primary, secondary, tertiary or shipment, and by whether it's likely to become household or non-household waste. Classify primary or shipment packaging as non-household and you need evidence, kept for seven years. Large producers have had to report plastic as rigid or flexible since January 2025. The RAM guidance is reviewed and reissued annually, so the version you assessed against last year isn't the one you'll use next year.

Then there are the dates. Packaging placed on the market in the first half of 2026 was due to be reported by 1 October. The second half is due by 1 April 2027, and PackUK intends to issue the initial 2026-27 notice of liability by the end of November. Somebody on your site owns those deadlines. On a lot of sites, nobody has formally been given them.

And the deposit return scheme is next

All four UK nations are due to start operating a deposit return scheme on 1 October 2027, with a 20p deposit on single-use drinks containers between 150ml and 3 litres made from PET, steel or aluminium. Glass is excluded in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with Wales running a transition for glass to October 2031.

For a drinks manufacturer that's artwork, barcoding, registration of every in-scope container, and changes to how product is tracked through the line. For everyone else it's a reminder that the regulatory pipeline isn't slowing down.

Waste reduction has a technical cost too

The obvious response to a per-tonne fee is to use less material, and plenty of sites are down-gauging film, reducing board grades and taking weight out of trays. It works. It also lands squarely on the technical team.

Thinner film changes seal integrity. Lighter board changes drop test performance and pallet stability. A material switch can change shelf life, and shelf life means challenge testing, trials, retailer approval and a revised specification. Nobody has ever taken weight out of a pack without the line telling them about it within a fortnight.

So every gramme saved on the EPR return has to be bought with technical work, and that work needs people who can do it properly rather than quickly.

What this does to the roles you're hiring

The Packaging Technologist role has changed most. It used to support NPD. It now owns a compliance position that carries direct cost consequences, and that calls for someone who can talk about material science, retailer specification and regulatory reporting in the same meeting.

Technical Managers are picking up data ownership they weren't recruited for. New titles are appearing on org charts, from Packaging Compliance Lead to Sustainability Manager, and the candidate pool behind them is thin because the combination of skills is recent. People who've run a full pEPR reporting cycle in a food business are, for now, a small group.

Three things to sort out before the next deadline

Decide who owns packaging data, properly, with it written into a job description. On too many sites the task has drifted to whoever had capacity, which works until that person leaves.

Bring packaging technical into concept stage rather than sign-off. A pack that's assessed for recyclability when it's being designed costs far less than one reformulated after the fee notice arrives.

And if you're short-handed through a reporting cycle, interim technical support is a sensible way to get through it without pulling your Technical Manager off everything else for a month.

Hiring for this? Let's talk

We recruit Packaging Technologists, Technical Managers, Quality Managers and sustainability specialists into food and drink manufacturing, and it's the only sector we work in. If the packaging workload has outgrown the team carrying it, we'll tell you what the market looks like for the skills you need.

Call the team on 0161 399 1575 or email info@truenorthtalent.co.uk.

Sources

Food and Drink Federation, Extended Producer Responsibility – an overview – fdf.org.uk

Food and Drink Federation, State of Industry Report Q2 2026 – fdf.org.uk

House of Commons Library, Deposit return schemes (CBP-10453) and Packaging extended producer responsibility (CBP-10352) – commonslibrary.parliament.uk