EU PPWR Is Now Live: What Pet Product Importers Must Do Before Q4 2026
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 took effect 12 August 2026. Packaging empty-space limits, PFAS restrictions, and EPR registration that now applies in every EU country you sell or warehouse in — not just Germany and France.
By WINVN · · 2 min read
Two compliance dates matter for EU-bound pet product packaging this year, and they are easy to conflate. EUR.1 and phytosanitary clearance decide whether your coffee wood chews get into the EU at all. PPWR decides whether the box they arrive in is legal to sell once they are there — and as of 12 August 2026, that is no longer a future date to plan around.
What actually changed on 12 August 2026
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 — the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation — is now enforced, and Amazon EU has activated inspection gates tied to it. Three provisions affect pet product sellers directly.
Empty space limit: product packaging and e-commerce shipping boxes cannot exceed 40% unnecessary empty space by volume.
Restricted substances: heavy metals (lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium) are capped under 100mg/kg combined, and PFAS is banned outright in any packaging that contacts food — a category that catches more pet chew packaging than sellers expect, since regulators treat anything an animal mouths similarly to food-contact material.
EPR registration, expanded scope: Extended Producer Responsibility registration used to mean Germany (LUCID) and France (ADEME) for most sellers. Under PPWR Article 45, it is now required in every EU country where your product is sold or warehoused — not just the two largest markets.
Why the EPR change is the one to act on first
The empty-space and substance rules are packaging engineering problems your supplier can solve. EPR is a paperwork and cost problem that is easy to underestimate: registration runs €250–€600 per country per year, and the real risk is not the fee — it is that Amazon can suspend a listing or lock a seller account in any EU country where registration is missing, even if you have been compliant in Germany and France for years.
What to check before your next EU shipment
Confirm with your packaging supplier what percentage of empty space your current box actually carries — most sellers have never had it measured. Ask whether your packaging materials have documented heavy-metal and PFAS test results, not just a general "food-safe" claim. And build an EPR country checklist against everywhere you currently sell or hold FBA inventory in the EU, not just your two original markets.
Where to start
Request a quote and tell us which EU countries you sell or warehouse in — we will walk through packaging that is already built to the empty-space and substance limits, alongside a recommendation to confirm current EPR registration requirements per country with your own compliance advisor before you finalize packaging.
