The best EPR software for manufacturers is the kind that works from your own specification, because you already hold the material weights every scheme asks for. Nobody else in the chain does.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) charges you for the packaging you put on the market. From 12 August 2026 a second duty lands on manufacturers as well, a written declaration that the packaging is legal. Below we rank seven tools against both jobs, and Repax is our pick.
Two kinds of manufacturer and two different duties
The word manufacturer does two jobs in packaging law, and which one describes you decides what you owe.
Regulation (EU) 2025/40, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), calls a manufacturer anyone who manufactures packaging or a packaged product. Two very different companies fit that sentence.
If you make the packaging itself
A converter printing cartons, extruding film or moulding closures is the manufacturer of that packaging. The conformity work is yours, which means the technical file and the signed declaration.
Whether you also pay EPR on it depends on what kind of packaging it is. Three types count as yours the moment you first supply them in your country, which are transport packaging, service packaging and primary production packaging.
Sales packaging you sell empty is different. It becomes your customer's obligation when they fill it and place the packaged product on the market, so the tonnage lands on their register and not yours.
One clause catches suppliers by surprise. If your customer is a micro-enterprise in your own member state and has the packaging made under their own brand, the law treats you as the manufacturer of that packaging, so their conformity file is your job.
If you make the packaged product
Fill your own packaging, put your brand on it and sell it, and you are the manufacturer even when another company prints the box. Having packaging made under your own name or trademark is what decides it, not who runs the press.
You are also the producer in every country where you first make the packaged product available. That is the role that registers with a national register, joins a scheme and pays the fees.
Most manufacturers are both
A plant that buys film, fills it and ships pallets sits on both sides of the split at once. The four common situations map like this.
| What you do | What lands on you |
|---|---|
| Make packaging and sell it empty to other businesses | You are the manufacturer of that packaging. The technical file and declaration, plus EPR fees only on transport, service and primary production packaging you supply first |
| Have packaging made under your own name or trademark | You are the manufacturer. The technical file and declaration for it, wherever it was printed |
| Fill packaging and sell the product under your brand | You are the manufacturer and the producer. The technical file and declaration, plus registration and fees in every country you sell in |
| Supply packaging to a micro-enterprise customer in your own country | You are the manufacturer of their packaging too. Their technical file and declaration, on top of your own |
The practical read is that a manufacturer carries a documentation duty a pure importer never has, and often carries fees on top. A tool that only files tonnage answers half of it.
Your bill of materials already holds most of the answer
Manufacturers start this work from a better position than anyone else in the chain, and it is worth being precise about why.
A scheme wants what a specification already knows
EPR fees are charged per material per kilogram. A scheme needs to know what each pack is made of, how much each part weighs, and how many you placed on the market in the period.
Your bill of materials has the first two already. The board grade, the film thickness, the label, the closure, the glue, each with a weight per unit, is the same list a filing needs.
An importer has to extract that from a factory abroad and hope the answer is right. You wrote it, which is why calculating the fee is a data-shaping job for you rather than a data-collection project.
The gap is shape rather than knowledge
The problem is that your data is organised for production and purchasing, not for a register. A specification lists components per product. A filing wants kilograms per material per country per period.
Each country then names those materials differently and asks for its own splits. Eco-modulated fees add another layer, because the rate depends on how recyclable the pack is, not just its weight.
So the software question for a manufacturer is narrow. Can it hold a component-level record and pour it into each market's shape without you rebuilding the sheet.
Every spec change reopens the file
Manufacturers also live with a duty the regulation writes specifically for them. Once packaging is in series production you have to keep procedures in place so it stays in conformity, and re-assess when the design, the characteristics or the standards behind it change.
That makes a routine film swap a compliance event. The tonnage changes, the recyclability grade may change, and the technical documentation behind the declaration has to catch up.
Two deadlines then sit behind it. You keep the file for 5 years after single-use packaging was placed on the market and 10 years for reusable packaging, and a market surveillance authority that asks for it gets 10 days.
Where the seven tools sit
Before the ranking, it helps to see that these seven do not all start from the same place.
The arc runs from tools that work off the totals you hand them to tools that hold your packaging as a component-level record. That one difference decides how much you rebuild every time a new market asks for something.
At the totals end you are buying a service, which suits a manufacturer who wants the work taken off the site. At the record end you describe your packaging properly once, which is more setup and much less repeat work.
Recyda and Repax are the two that genuinely work at component level, and they do it for different desks.
What we looked for in EPR software for manufacturers
A manufacturer is not a bigger importer, so the criteria are not the same either. These five decided the order.
| What we looked for | Why it matters to a manufacturer |
|---|---|
| Works at component level | Your data lives as parts and weights. A tool that only accepts a finished tonnage throws away the detail that makes the number defensible. |
| One spec, every market's format | You already know what the pack is. The work is turning that into what each register asks for without a new sheet per country. |
| Carries the streams your plant triggers | A production line often places packaging, electronics and batteries on the market at once, each filed with a different body. |
| Produces the conformity file, not just the tonnage | The Annex VII technical file, the signed declaration and the retention clock are a separate job from the annual report. |
| Someone in your building can run it | Compliance that needs a consultant every quarter never becomes routine, and the people who know the spec are already on site. |
Several capable tools dropped out on those five. Staxxer, EPR Insights, ForSURE and Lizenzero are built around ecommerce and marketplace sellers, so they start from order data rather than a specification, and AlgoREP answers France beautifully and nothing else.
PCX Solutions and rePurpose Global sit closer to plastic credits and brand programmes than to production data. Valpak and Ecosurety are UK schemes, and Ecoveritas represents that managed-service model on this list.
Complir and Prduct are worth knowing about but are not on the list. They document supplier and product data well, and neither publishes fee calculation, scheme registration, report submission or a declaration tool.
The best EPR software for manufacturers ranked
We ranked these seven on fit for a company that makes something, not on feature count.
What moved a tool up was whether it can hold your specification at component level, how many markets and streams it answers from that one record, and whether it does anything about the conformity file the regulation now expects.
Each entry says what the tool is, who it suits, and the thing to check before you commit.
1. Repax for turning your specification into every filing
Repax starts where a manufacturer already is, which is a product you can describe down to the component.
Assemblies are the part that maps onto how a plant actually thinks. You build a pack once out of its components, reuse it across every product that shares it, and change it in one place when a material changes.
From that record Repax produces what each market asks for. A new country is a new output rather than a new spreadsheet, which is the difference between compliance as a data property and compliance as an annual scramble.
The reporting view is where the mass you placed on the market adds up per period, per market and per stream, so the number in a filing traces back to the components behind it.
It is also our own product, so we lead with it, though we are straight about where each rival wins below. Two parts are live today and a third is on the way.
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Core holds the product and packaging data and produces the reports for every market and stream.
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Declare builds the EU Declaration of Conformity from those same records, which is the duty that arrives on 12 August 2026.
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Comply will handle registrations and submissions. It is not released yet and there is a waitlist for 2026.
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Best for manufacturers who own their specification and want one description of their packaging to answer every market, plus the declaration.
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Where it acts across the whole line, from the component record to the filed report and the signed declaration.
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What it does with your product data keeps it as structured components with materials and weights, then generates each register's format and the declaration from the same source.
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Markets and streams one data layer that answers each market's own register rather than a fixed country list, covering packaging, batteries, electronics and textiles.
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Pricing public, with a free tier at €0 a month, paid plans from €29 a month and enterprise for high volume (as of August 2026).
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Watch-out Repax gives you the data, the reports and the declaration, and you press send. It does not act as your scheme, it does not sign the declaration for you, and the product that files on your behalf is still on the way.
2. Recyda for deciding materials before they cost you
Recyda is the one tool on this list that belongs on the design bench rather than the reporting desk.
The German platform scores a pack against national and international recyclability standards, naming the ZSVR minimum standard and EN 18120. From the same data it calculates and declares EPR fees across the countries you sell in.
For a packaging developer that is the useful bit, because it turns a material choice into a number before the pack ships.
Their PPWR work is unusually concrete. Their PPWR Navigator generates a Declaration of Conformity from a standard or custom template, auto-populated and ready for signature, plus a technical documentation summary that consolidates data across components, with a status trail from review to signed.
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Best for manufacturers whose packaging team chooses materials, and who want the recyclability grade and the fee to move together.
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Where it acts the design bench, upstream of the filing.
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What it does with your product data structures packaging data, resolves gaps, then scores recyclability and calculates fees from it.
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Markets and streams 20+ countries for EPR and recyclability, packaging only.
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Pricing not published, demo first.
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Watch-out packaging is the whole scope, so a plant that also places electronics or batteries on the market needs something else alongside it. Their own site announced a partnership with SAP for PPWR recyclability reporting, which tells you the intended customer is large.
3. Sphera for a group with plants in several countries
Sphera is the heritage answer for manufacturing groups, and the customers named on their own page are manufacturers rather than retailers.
Their EC4P platform claims over 360 compliance schemes worldwide across packaging, batteries and WEEE, managed from one dashboard. You enter product data, and registration, reporting and deadline tracking sit on top of it.
One line matters more than the feature list for a busy group. They can pay the recycling fees on your behalf and send you a single invoice, which is a real simplification when a dozen schemes each want their own payment.
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Best for multi-site manufacturers who want the widest scheme coverage available and are comfortable buying software with consultants attached.
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Where it acts the reporting desk, with the payment layer as well.
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What it does with your product data takes it into the EC4P cloud platform as the base for registrations and reports.
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Markets and streams over 360 schemes worldwide, packaging plus batteries and WEEE.
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Pricing not published, demo-led.
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Watch-out their recycling-compliance page does not list PPWR conformity or the Declaration of Conformity, so treat the declaration as a separate job. This is enterprise software, and we cover that tier in more depth on the enterprise list.
4. Lorax EPI for many streams and many schemes at once
Lorax EPI is the pure-play EPR specialist, and the one to look at when a single production line triggers several regimes.
Their own site advertises over 200 schemes available, and their ENVI software covers packaging, WEEE, batteries, textiles and plastic taxation. Schemes rather than countries is the honest unit, because one country often runs several.
Around the software sit six services, including obligation assessment, data screening, registration and fee modelling. Fee modelling is the one manufacturers tend to use most, because it puts a number on what a material change will cost across markets before it is made.
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Best for manufacturers with a genuinely multi-stream footprint who want a specialist rather than a suite.
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Where it acts the reporting desk, with consulting either side of it.
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What it does with your product data screens it, models fees on it and prepares the reports from it.
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Markets and streams over 200 schemes, packaging plus WEEE, batteries, textiles and plastic taxation.
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Pricing not published.
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Watch-out they carry out registrations with schemes, authorities and authorised representatives, and the submission itself stays with you. They are positioned for compliance teams, so a plant without one may find the service layer heavier than it needs.
5. Ecoveritas for handing the data work to someone else
Ecoveritas answers a different question, which is what to do when nobody in the building has time to own this.
They manage global EPR data reporting in 30+ countries as a service, running obligation assessment, then data collection, calculation and reporting, with their my.ecoveritas platform behind it. UK EPR, the Plastic Packaging Tax and recyclability assessment are all in scope.
The scale is aimed squarely at the top of the market. Their own numbers include 70+ clients with a combined turnover above £50 billion, more than two million SKUs held with unique packaging metrics, and over 20,000 supplier data requests processed a year.
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Best for manufacturers who would rather buy an outcome than run a tool, especially with a UK obligation in the mix.
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Where it acts handed over, with the platform as the client-side window.
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What it does with your product data collects it, calculates from it and files the returns on the strength of it.
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Markets and streams 30+ countries, packaging first, with WEEE and battery calculations alongside.
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Pricing not published.
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Watch-out a managed service means the working knowledge sits with them rather than your team, and the model is built for large brands and retailers, so a single-plant manufacturer may be under the intended size.
6. Source Intelligence for pulling data out of systems you already run
Source Intelligence is the one to consider when the packaging data exists but is scattered across systems nobody wants to export by hand.
Their EPR module is built around data integration and automated collation, combining product records with SKU and sales data, then evaluating eco-modulation fees automatically and building country-specific reports. They describe the approach as data-first, replacing manual outreach.
They name manufacturers as a target buyer, from small organisations up to enterprises, which is unusual for a platform of that shape.
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Best for manufacturers with data spread across several internal systems who want the collation automated rather than staffed.
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Where it acts between your systems and the reporting desk.
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What it does with your product data integrates and collates it, then evaluates fees and builds reports from it.
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Markets and streams global EPR without a public country list, covering packaging, WEEE and batteries.
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Pricing not published, demo only.
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Watch-out the specific jurisdictions are not named publicly, so ask for the list covering your markets before you commit. They also stop short of claiming they submit on your behalf, and the declaration is not part of the offer.
7. ecosistant for a small plant in a handful of markets
ecosistant is the cheapest honest way onto this list, and the only other tool here with a public price.
The German platform covers up to 30 European countries and four streams, which are packaging, WEEE and batteries, textiles and furniture. It runs from one dashboard with questionnaires, registration guidance and deadline tracking.
There is a free compliance test before you buy, and a premium tier that adds an account manager.
At €24.90 per country it is priced for a company adding one market at a time rather than mapping a continent at once.
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Best for small manufacturers selling into a few European countries who need to be registered correctly and reported on time.
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Where it acts the reporting desk, with consulting available.
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What it does with your product data takes the volumes and materials you supply and turns them into per-country registrations and reports.
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Markets and streams up to 30 European countries, packaging plus WEEE and batteries, textiles and furniture.
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Pricing public, from €24.90 per country (as of August 2026).
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Watch-out the product is built around online shops and small sellers, so it is guidance and filing rather than a component-level product record, and there is no declaration tool.
Pick by who will actually use it
The right answer here depends less on your size than on which desk this work is going to land on.
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A packaging developer or R&D team. Recyda is built for you, because it puts the recyclability grade and the fee next to the material choice. Pair it with something that files if you place more than packaging on the market.
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A plant or operations lead. Repax fits this case best, since the component record is the same thing you already maintain and the pricing is public, so nothing needs a procurement project to start.
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A group compliance function. Sphera, Lorax EPI and Source Intelligence are all built for a team that owns compliance across sites, with the widest scheme coverage and the modelling to go with it.
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Finance, with nobody to spare. Ecoveritas takes the work away entirely, and Sphera will pay the scheme fees on one invoice, which is often the real reason a finance lead cares.
If you are a small manufacturer in one or two markets, ecosistant covers the basics for less than anything else here, and the general list has more of the small-company options. Starting from nothing, our guide to getting started with EPR compliance is the better first stop.
The seven tools compared side by side
Here is the whole list in one view, in ranked order.
| Tool | Best for | What it does with your product data | Markets and streams | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Repax | Manufacturers who own their spec and want one record to answer everything | Keeps components, materials and weights, then generates each report and the declaration | Each market's own register; packaging, batteries, electronics, textiles | Public, free tier, from €29/mo |
| Recyda | Packaging teams choosing materials | Structures it, then scores recyclability and calculates fees | 20+ countries; packaging only | Demo only |
| Sphera | Groups with plants in several countries | Takes it into EC4P as the base for registration and reporting | 360+ schemes; packaging, batteries, WEEE | Demo only |
| Lorax EPI | Multi-stream footprints | Screens it, models fees, prepares reports | 200+ schemes; packaging, WEEE, batteries, textiles | Not published |
| Ecoveritas | Manufacturers buying an outcome | Collects, calculates and files on it | 30+ countries; packaging, WEEE and battery calculations | Not published |
| Source Intelligence | Data scattered across internal systems | Integrates and collates it, then builds reports | Global, no public country list; packaging, WEEE, batteries | Demo only |
| ecosistant | Small plants in a few markets | Turns supplied volumes into registrations and reports | Up to 30 European countries; packaging, WEEE, batteries, textiles, furniture | Public, from €24.90 per country |
Two patterns are worth reading off that table. Only two of the seven publish a price, and only two produce the conformity declaration as well as the report.
Frequently asked questions about EPR software for manufacturers
The questions manufacturers ask most when they start looking at this, answered on their own.
What is the best EPR software for manufacturers?
Repax is our pick, because it holds your packaging at component level and produces both the per-market report and the EU Declaration of Conformity from that one record.
Recyda is the strongest choice if the decision sits with your packaging developers, and Sphera or Lorax EPI make more sense for a group that needs the widest scheme coverage available.
Is a packaging manufacturer a producer under EPR?
Sometimes, and it depends on what kind of packaging you make. Under the PPWR definition you are the producer of transport packaging, service packaging and primary production packaging that you first supply in your country.
Sales packaging you sell empty is different, because it becomes your customer's obligation when they fill it and place the packaged product on the market.
There is also a clause that shifts the duty up the chain. Supply packaging to a micro-enterprise customer in your own member state that sells it under its own brand, and you are treated as the manufacturer of that packaging.
Do manufacturers have to draw up an EU Declaration of Conformity?
Yes, from 12 August 2026. Before placing packaging on the market a manufacturer has to carry out the conformity assessment, draw up the Annex VII technical documentation and draw up the EU Declaration of Conformity.
It is a separate duty from EPR reporting, and being registered with a scheme does not cover it. Our declaration checklist walks through what has to be in the file.
What packaging data do manufacturers need for EPR reporting?
Every component of every pack, the material it is made of, its weight per unit, and the number of units you placed on the market in each country during the period.
That is why a bill of materials is such a strong starting point. The components and weights are already there, and the remaining work is mapping them to each scheme's material categories and reporting periods.
Is there free EPR software for manufacturers?
Yes, on a small scale. Repax Core and Repax Declare both have a free tier at €0 a month, which covers 250 products and one full declaration respectively, and ecosistant offers a free compliance test before you buy.
Everything else on this list is quoted after a demo, so a free evaluation is not usually on the table.
How much does EPR software for manufacturers cost?
Repax publishes its prices. Core and Declare are priced separately, each with a free tier, paid plans from €29 a month and enterprise pricing for high volume, as of August 2026. ecosistant starts at €24.90 per country.
The other five on this list are sales-led with no public price, so the cost depends on your scheme count, your volumes and how much of the work you hand over. Scheme fees themselves are separate from any software cost.
Does EPR software replace a producer responsibility organisation?
No. A producer responsibility organisation takes on your EPR obligations in a market and handles the waste side, and software prepares and delivers the data it needs.
You still need the scheme membership. What good software removes is the manual work of turning your specification into the numbers the scheme asks for, which is also what our guide to EPR reporting covers step by step.
How long do manufacturers have to keep the conformity documents?
Five years for single-use packaging and 10 years for reusable packaging, counted from the date the packaging was placed on the market.
The clock runs per packaging type, so a pack you launched in 2026 stays on file even after you stop making it. If a market surveillance authority asks for the documents, you have 10 days to produce them.
