By the end of this guide your company will hold a registration number in the LUCID packaging register, the list Germany keeps of everyone who puts packaged goods on its market. Registering costs nothing.
One part of it surprises most people. German law says you have to do it yourself. No adviser, no service provider and no authorised representative may file the registration for you, so this is one compliance task you cannot hand to anyone else.
What the register asks you for before you start
Germany's packaging law, the Packaging Law Implementation Act (VerpackDG), spells out what the form may ask for, so there are no surprises waiting inside it. Write all of it down before you open the portal, because a half-finished registration is not a registration.
| What LUCID asks for | What to have ready |
|---|---|
| Company details | Your registered name, address and contact details |
| Your authorised representative | If you have no establishment in Germany, its details and your written mandate |
| A named person | One natural person authorised to represent the company |
| An identifier and a mailbox | Your VAT number or tax reference number, plus the email address the register should write to |
| Brand names | Every brand you place packaged goods under in Germany |
| Packaging details | Which packaging types leave your business with goods inside them |
| Two declarations | That every entry is true, and how your take-back duty is met |
Nothing on that list needs a lawyer. The identifier is the one that stalls people, because a company outside the EU may have no VAT number to give, and a tax reference number goes in instead.
The three duties behind one LUCID account
Registration is the first of three separate duties, and it is common to assume it covers all three.
The LUCID register itself is a list. Being on it tells the German authorities, your retailers and your marketplaces who you are and what you sell. It pays for no recycling at all.
The second duty is joining a dual system. If your packaging is the kind that ends up in a household bin, you sign a contract with one of the approved systems and pay them to handle the recycling. That has to be in place before the packaging goes on sale.
The third is data reporting. Whatever volumes you give your dual system, you give the register the same figures.
The steps below cover the first duty only. A later section picks up the other two.
How to register with LUCID step by step
Six steps, and the last one is how you prove to yourself that it worked.
Step 1. Confirm that Germany counts you as the producer
The register runs one test. You are the producer if you are the first to make packaging filled with goods available on the German market. A company based in Germany passes that test the moment it does so. A company based anywhere else passes it only when it ships straight to end users in Germany, whether private or commercial.
For imported goods that usually means the German importer. An importer buying from a supplier in China is usually the producer, not the supplier. Sell into Germany yourself, straight to your customers, and the duty is yours.
Since 12 August 2026 this test has come from the EU packaging regulation, which sets one producer definition for every member state and applies in Germany through the VerpackDG.
Step 2. Sort your packaging into the two groups the register uses
LUCID asks which packaging types you place on the market, and answering it splits your packaging in two.
One group is packaging subject to system participation, which the register defines as packaging that typically ends up as waste with private consumers. Retail, grouped, shipment and service packaging all sit here.
The other group is everything that does not typically reach a household bin. Transport packaging, reusable packaging, deposit-bearing single-use drinks packaging and retail packaging for hazardous contents belong to it.
The split does not decide whether you register, because every producer registers either way. It decides what follows. Place packaging only from the second group and you have no volumes to report, while anything from the first group pulls in a dual system contract and regular reports.
Step 3. Open your own account in the LUCID portal
Registration happens in the LUCID portal, run by the Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister, the body Germany put in charge of the register. It costs nothing, and that holds for everything the agency does, data reporting included.
This is the step nobody can take for you. The agency's position is that the producer must apply personally, and that the information and declarations the form asks for may not be provided by third parties.
Producers based outside Germany sometimes expect a way around that. There is not one. Since 12 August 2026 a producer with no branch in Germany must appoint an authorised representative for its other German packaging duties, and the law expressly leaves registration out of what that representative is allowed to do.
So set the account up in the name of the producer, never in an agency's name. An adviser can sit beside you while you fill it in. The submission has to be yours.
Step 4. Enter your company details and your brand names
The form walks through the list from the first section. Company name, address and contact details, then the natural person authorised to represent you, then your VAT number or tax reference number and the email address the agency should use.
Brand names deserve real care. You list every brand you place packaged goods under in Germany, and the register publishes them, so a brand you leave out is a brand that looks unregistered to anyone who checks. New ones go in later as a change notification rather than as a second registration.
Then you mark the packaging types you sorted in step 2. This is where that work pays off, because the form wants types, not tonnages. Volumes come later and go somewhere else.
Step 5. Make the two declarations and submit
Two declarations close the form. The first is that every entry you have made is true.
The second is how you meet your take-back duty, which for most producers means confirming the packaging goes into a dual system. Producers who only pass on service packaging their supplier has already registered have a separate box for that case.
Submitting sends the registration to the agency, which confirms it and assigns your registration number. The number reaches you as an administrative act by email, and it also sits in your dashboard in the portal from then on.
Do all of this before your first packaged product goes on sale in Germany. The law is blunt about the order. A producer that is not properly registered may not place packaging on the market, distributors may not offer those goods either, and online marketplaces have to collect your registration number before they let you sell.
Step 6. Look yourself up in the public producer register
German law makes the register public, which hands you a way to check your own work. Every registered producer is published with their name and address, their brand names, the packaging details they entered, their registration number and the date they registered.
Open the public producer register and search for your company. Germany's is one of many national producer registers built this way. Seeing your own row, with the brands you expect and none missing, is the point at which this job is genuinely finished.
It is also what everyone else sees. Marketplaces read that row before they let you list, and a retailer or a competitor can look you up whenever they feel like it.
What to do once you have your registration number
Two more duties start straight away now that you have a number, and a third arrives later if you grow.
Joining a dual system
Producers of packaging subject to system participation have to join one or more approved systems before that packaging goes on sale. That contract is where the cost of packaging compliance in Germany actually sits. Registration is free. Recycling is not.
Reporting the same volumes twice
Every volume figure you give your dual system goes to the register as well, without delay, and it has to be the same figure. Each report carries your registration number, the material type and mass of the packaging, the name of your system and the period it covers.
Two slots in the year matter. A planned volume report for the coming year can only be filed up to 31 December, and a year-end report for the year just gone only up to 1 June, after which it goes in as a supplementary report.
A producer that placed less than 10 tonnes of this packaging in Germany the year before can skip the running reports and file one year-end report by 1 June instead.
The declaration of completeness
This one arrives once your previous year's volumes reach any one of three thresholds.
| Material | Threshold for the previous calendar year |
|---|---|
| Glass | 80,000 kg |
| Paper, paperboard and cardboard together | 50,000 kg |
| Lightweight packaging together, meaning ferrous metals, aluminium, plastics, beverage cartons and other composites | 30,000 kg |
It is filed through LUCID by 15 May for the previous year, and an auditor registered in LUCID has to examine and confirm it before you can submit. Extensions are not granted, so anyone close to a threshold should book that auditor early.
Where Repax fits around a registration you file yourself
No software can register you with LUCID, Repax included, and that is the whole point of this page. What Repax does is make sure that what you type in is right, and stays right as your product range changes.
By hand, a German packaging year is a spreadsheet of every product's materials and weights, reconciled twice, once against a dual system portal and once against the register. The reconciling is the part that goes wrong.
Repax Core holds one structured spec per product, broken down to materials and components, with shipped volumes arriving from your webshop or your order data. From that one spec it generates the report each filing wants, in the shape that filing wants it. Three parts of the German job run on it.
Try Repax Core for free - no card required Describe your products once and Core builds the report each market and scheme expects. Try it freeThe packaging types you declare
The types you mark in step 2 come off your product specs rather than off someone's memory of what the boxes look like. If a supplier swapped a product's film wrap last spring, the spec carries the change and the type you declare follows it.
The two reports that have to match
Your dual system figures and your register figures come out of the same data, so they agree. That is what the law asks for, and it is the most common place producers slip.
The audit trail behind a completeness declaration
Certificates, photos and specs attach to the product they belong to. That is what an auditor wants in front of them when a declaration of completeness is due, rather than a folder of loose files.
What Core does not do is submit anything. It is not a filing or registration service, and German law would not permit it to be.
If Germany is one market of several, the rest of your extended producer responsibility work repeats country by country. Registering for EPR in Europe walks through that, and the German EPR tool comparison covers what else is on the market.
Common mistakes when registering with LUCID
Almost everything that goes wrong here starts from an assumption that sounds perfectly reasonable. These are the six that cost producers the most time.
| What people assume | What actually applies |
|---|---|
| A service provider can register on my behalf | Registration has to come from the producer, and an authorised representative is expressly barred from it |
| Being registered means my packaging is paid for | The register is a list. Recycling is paid for through a dual system contract |
| I can register once I start selling | Registration has to be finished before the first packaged product reaches the German market |
| Only packaging that goes in a household bin needs registering | Every producer registers. The household bin question decides reporting and system participation instead |
| One brand name is enough | Every brand you sell packaged goods under goes in, and the register publishes the list |
| My dual system report is the whole job | The same figures go to the register separately, and without delay |
The first and last rows are the expensive ones. Handing the registration to a service provider leaves you looking registered while you are not, and reporting to your dual system alone leaves the register without figures it is supposed to hold, when the two sets are meant to match exactly.
Frequently asked questions about the LUCID packaging register
A few things producers ask most often once they start.
How long does this take?
No processing time is published, and the form itself is short. The work sits in front of it, in listing your brands and sorting your packaging types. Do that first and the portal session is brief.
Do I need a German company or a German address?
No. Whoever counts as the producer for the German market has to register, whatever country it is based in.
Since 12 August 2026 a producer with no branch in Germany must appoint an authorised representative for its other duties under the VerpackDG, though not for the registration itself.
What if I only hand out bags and cups at the counter?
That is service packaging, and German law lets you require the supplier who delivers it unfilled to take on system participation for it. The registration form carries a declaration for that case.
How the two rules meet depends on your setup, so read the register's own guidance before assuming you are outside the register.
Can Repax register with LUCID for me?
No, and nor can anyone else. Registration is yours to submit under German law, and data reports can come only from you or your authorised representative. Repax produces the numbers and the documentation behind them, and EPR reporting is where most of that work really sits.
What happens if I sell in Germany without registering?
A producer that is not properly registered may not place packaging on the German market, distributors may not offer those goods either, and online marketplaces have to collect your registration number before they let you sell. In practice it shows up as suppressed marketplace listings long before it shows up as anything more formal.
What does registering cost?
Nothing. Registration, data reporting and everything else the agency does is free for producers. The cost of German packaging compliance sits in the dual system contract instead, and working out your EPR fees explains how those are built.
