Krzysztof Szwiec October 29, 2026 You're reading:
PPWR 2026: How to report packaging in Business Central
- Since August 2026, Brussels wants to know about your packaging. Here's how to answer with Business Central
- What PPWR requires
- The data exists, just in different places
- The cost of doing it by hand
- How we solved it in Business Central
- The results
- Next step: packaging on the purchasing side
- Is your system ready?
Since August 2026, Brussels wants to know about your packaging. Here’s how to answer with Business Central
How many kilograms of film, cardboard and pallets did your company ship to the Czech Republic last year? Until recently, nobody needed to know. But since 12 August 2026, the EU’s PPWR regulation has been in force. Packaging is no longer just something that comes with the product. It now goes into a report, with its weight, material and destination country. Here’s how we pulled that data together in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central without any manual calculations.
What PPWR requires
PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, EU Regulation 2025/40) replaces the previous Packaging Directive. Because it’s a regulation, it applies directly and in the same way in every EU country. It doesn’t only affect packaging manufacturers. It covers any company that places packaged products on the EU market. The requirements come in stages:
- From 2026: reporting the weight and number of packaging units placed on the market, broken down by material and EU country.
- from 2028: harmonised packaging labelling.
- from 2030:minimum recycled content, recyclability, packaging minimisation and limits on empty space.
The aim is less waste and more recovered raw materials. For businesses, it comes down to one thing: you need reliable packaging data.
The data exists, just in different places
Most companies already have their packaging data. Nobody has put it together yet. Packaging is defined in the bills of materials (BOMs), shipments are recorded on delivery notes, and the country sits on the customer card. Then there are the details. An invoice might go to a Polish company while the goods are shipped to Germany. Under PPWR, what counts is where the packaging physically ends up, not the address on the invoice.The cost of doing it by hand
A manual report means pulling together every shipment from the whole year, splitting them by product, checking the BOMs, multiplying by the weight of each packaging item and grouping the results by country. With several hundred items and thousands of delivery notes, that takes the logistics team days, not hours. And those are the same people who should be getting shipments out the door. There’s also the risk of mistakes, which means corrections, explaining yourself during an audit and possible penalties. On top of that, the Excel spreadsheet has to be rebuilt from scratch every year.How we solved it in Business Central
For our client, a plastics manufacturer, we built a PPWR report that runs directly in Business Central:
- Based on actual shipments. The report uses the item ledger entries created when shipments are posted, not orders or invoices. Returns are deducted automatically.
- Packaging taken from BOMs. The system takes packaging from certified BOM versions, at the shipping level only. Packaging used for semi-finished goods doesn't inflate the totals.
- Results by country and material. Data is grouped by EU country and packaging material. Sales outside the EU are excluded automatically.
- Gaps are visible. Items with no country or material go into a separate "MISSING" group, so nothing quietly disappears.
- Ready for the next stages. Packaging properties such as material, recyclability, reusability and declaration of conformity are stored as configurable attributes with effective dates. The same report will handle the 2028 and 2030 requirements without any code changes.
- On-screen view and export. You can review the results on screen, including packaging composition, and export them to Excel in one click.
The results
The report has been running in production since 12 August 2026, the day PPWR came into force. The client spot-checked the quantities and weights, and the figures match. In practice, this means:- Minutes instead of days. A full-year report takes choosing a period and one click.
- Fewer errors and corrections. The data comes from posted shipments and certified BOMs, and any gaps show up straight away in the "MISSING" group.
- No extra projects in 2028 and 2030. New requirements mean a configuration change, not another implementation.
- Logistics can focus on logistics, not on retyping data for reports.
Next step: packaging on the purchasing side
Sales are only the beginning. Under PPWR, a “producer” also includes any company that is the first to place packaging on the market in a given country. That includes the packaging your raw materials arrive in from foreign suppliers, such as big bags, sacks and pallets. If you import goods or buy them in another EU country, that packaging may also need to go into your report.
Most companies don’t have this data in their ERP. Packaging weight and type usually appear only on transport documents, either on paper or in a PDF from the freight forwarder. If you start recording them in the system when goods are received, you won’t have to piece them together at the end of the year. That’s why we’re extending our solution to purchasing, with packaging recorded at goods receipt and summaries ready for reporting, just as on the sales side.