First, the date trap
Sales material currently often contains sentences like “binding since August 2026”. That is correct and still misleading. The Regulation has been applicable law since 12 August 2026 – but the obligations that concern a keg are dated to later deadlines within it. Anyone claiming today that kegs have had to meet something since 2026 is open to attack.
- 11 Feb 2025Entry into forceRegulation (EU) 2025/40 enters into force. Without immediate obligations.
- 12 Aug 2026Start of applicationThe Regulation applies. On the same day the Verpackungsrecht-Durchführungsgesetz (German packaging law implementing act) enters into force in Germany; the German Packaging Act (VerpackG) ceased to have effect the day before.
- 12 Aug 2026Commission deadline for two implementing actsArt. 12(6) and (7): harmonised labelling and material specification. The act under paragraph 6 is what triggers the QR obligation.
- 12 Feb 2027Guidelines on the beverage targetsArt. 29(8): the Commission publishes guidelines on which products fall under the reuse targets for beverages. For draught beer, the open question.
- 12 Aug 2028Labelling of packaging in generalArt. 12(1), with a postponement clause.
- 12 Feb 2029QR code on reusable packagingArt. 12(2) – or 30 months after the implementing act enters into force, whichever is the later date.
- 1 Jan 2030Reuse obligations for transport packagingArt. 29(1) to (3). For the keg, the deadline that really counts.
- 1 Jan 2040The 70 percent aimed forArt. 29(1), second subparagraph, is a best-efforts clause (“shall endeavour”), not a hard quota. It should not be presented as binding.
Article 29: the keg is named in the legal text
The list of packaging formats covered is unusually specific and leaves no room for interpretation:
“From 1 January 2030, economic operators that use transport packaging, or sales packaging used for transporting products […] within the territory of the Union, in the form of pallets, foldable-plastic boxes, boxes, trays, plastic crates, intermediate bulk containers, pails, drums and canisters of any size or material […], shall ensure that at least 40 % of such packaging in total is reusable packaging within a re-use system.”
Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Art. 29(1), first subparagraphThe four exemptions in paragraph 4 do not apply to beer kegs: no dangerous goods under Directive 2008/68/EC, no large machinery or custom build, no flexible format, no cardboard box. A stainless steel keg therefore falls under the rule.
The 40 percent is not the interesting part
Read paragraph 1 alone and you conclude that this is about a quota of 40 percent. For the German brewing industry, though, that is the edge case. The two paragraphs that follow govern deviations – upwards.
Paragraph 2 covers transport between sites of the same company and to linked enterprises and partner enterprises. From 1 January 2030 such packaging has to be reusable within a reuse system.
Paragraph 3 covers supply to another economic operator within the same Member State. Here too: from 1 January 2030 reusable within a reuse system.
Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Art. 29(2) and (3), paraphrasedBrewery to hospitality trade in the same country is not a quota case, it is a must.Paragraph 3 has no percentage. It requires such packaging to be reusable – and to be so within a reuse system.
That shifts the question. A reusable keg is reusable; that is trivial. Proving that it runs within a reuse system is not. Article 3(31) defines that system as organisational, technical or financial arrangements that enable reuse, expressly including a deposit and return system that ensures packaging is collected for reuse.
So the regulatory pressure does not fall on the keg. It falls on the return of kegs and on documenting it.
Article 12: the QR code has to be able to count trips
The second provision is of interest to anyone thinking about keg identification. It sits in Article 12(2) and is remarkably precise about what the data carrier has to deliver:
“Further information on reusability, including the availability of a local, national or Union-wide re-use system and information on collection points, shall be made available through a QR code or other type of standardised, open, digital data carrier that facilitates the tracking of the packaging and the calculation of trips and rotations, or, if that calculation is not feasible, an average estimation.”
Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Art. 12(2)- Standardised and openAn in-house numbering scheme does not meet this. Anyone setting up a keg database today should go for an open schema from the start – GS1 Digital Link with GTIN and serial number is the obvious implementation.
- Tracking of the packagingThat presupposes identity at individual keg level. A batch or type marking is not enough for it.
- Calculation of tripsExactly the figure that hardly any operation keeps today. The Regulation allows an average estimate where the calculation is not feasible – whoever counts is on the safe side.
Who it is addressed to – and who not
Paragraph 2 is worded passively: packaging that is placed on the market has to be labelled. The addressee is therefore the party placing it on the market, not the reconditioner. A pure reconditioning operation is formally not obliged.
In practice, though, reconditioning is the only process step at which a keg is opened, inspected and re-marked anyway. A service can be built on that. It is a business opportunity, not a legal duty – and we keep the two apart here.
Annex VI Part B: the first European specification for keg reconditioning
The chain closes through three cross-references. Article 29 requires reusability within a reuse system. Reuse systems have to meet the requirements of Annex VI. And Article 3(32) defines reconditioning as “any operation listed in Part B of Annex VI necessary to restore reusable packaging to a functional state for the purpose of its re-use”.
Annex VI Part B lists six operations. Anyone who has ever stood in a keg workshop will recognise them.
| Annex VI Part B | Wording, official English version | What lies behind it in the workshop |
|---|---|---|
| a) | “assessment of the condition of the packaging” | Incoming inspection: dents, neck, chime, weld seams, spear seat, smell test |
| b) | “removal of damaged or non-reusable components of the packaging” | Remove the spear, sort out seals, springs, down tube |
| c) | “conveyance of removed components of the packaging to an appropriate recovery process” | Separate collection of stainless steel, elastomers and plastic |
| d) | “cleaning and washing the packaging according to required hygiene conditions” | Outer washing, interior cleaning with caustic and acid, ultrasonic bath for down tube and spear parts |
| e) | “repair of the packaging” | Removing dents, straightening the chimes, welding, resetting the spear and tightening it to torque |
| f) | “inspection and assessment of fitness-for-purpose of the packaging” | Leak and pressure test on the filled keg, final acceptance, marking |
The introductory sentence of Part B also requires that reconditioning carries no risk to the health and safety of the people carrying it out and is operated “in accordance with applicable laws on contact-sensitive materials, waste and industrial emissions”. The reference to contact-sensitive materials pulls food contact law into PPWR compliance – and with it the question of cleaning agent residues.
The requirement in point (f) – “inspection and assessment of fitness-for-purpose of the packaging” – cannot be met without documentation for each keg. That ties Annex VI Part B directly to Article 12: without identification of the individual keg you can neither assign a test result nor count a trip. The two provisions mesh, even though they sit in quite different places in the Regulation.
Germany: new act, unchanged position on deposits
The German Packaging Act is history. Its place has been taken by the Verpackungsrecht-Durchführungsgesetz (VerpackDG, German packaging law implementing act), promulgated as Article 1 of the Act adapting packaging law and other areas of law to Regulation (EU) 2025/40, BGBl. 2026 I No. 207 of 17 July 2026. Two dates not to be mixed up: the VerpackG ceased to have effect on 11 August 2026, the VerpackDG entered into force on 12 August 2026.
It misses the legal position. The deposit obligation applied, and applies, to single-use beverage packaging – that was § 31 VerpackG, today § 46 VerpackDG. A reusable keg was never covered by it, so it needs no exemption. And even if hypothetically treated as single-use, at 20, 30 or 50 litres it would be far above the upper limit of three litres.
The keg deposit customary in the industry is purely contractual. It is a security instrument of the lessor, not a statutory levy – and therefore free in amount, forfeiture and settlement.
For a return system this is the decisive freedom of design: there is no state clearing house and no prescribed deposit amount. At the same time, Article 3(31) of the PPWR provides for the first time a footing in European law for setting up a private keg deposit scheme as a formal reuse system, with Annex VI as the quality framework.
What the legislator still leaves open
- Draught beer and the beverage targetsArticle 29(6) obliges final distributors to make at least 10 percent of the beverages supplied to consumers available in reusable packaging from 2030. Beer is not covered by the exemptions in paragraph 7. Whether and how draught beer counts towards this quota is to be clarified by the Commission guidelines by 12 February 2027. Until then it is not a selling point but an open question.
- The date 12 February 2029 is movableIt only holds if the implementing act under Article 12(6) arrives in time. If the Commission is late, the QR obligation moves back by the same period. Anyone tying investments to it today should factor that in.
- The full text of § 46 VerpackDGWhether the new act has taken over the exemption structure of the old § 31(4) unchanged is something we could not verify against the wording. The statement that it does not apply to reusable packaging follows from the heading of the provision and from its structure, not from a checked paragraph text.
Note on sources
The passages reproduced verbatim here have been cross-checked against the official full text of the Regulation: Official Journal of the European Union, accessed via EUR-Lex (CELEX 32025R0040) on 30 October 2026. The official version in the language of this page is cited in each instance. Omissions are marked […].
For a legal document, a call for tenders or a contract, the wording should nevertheless be checked against the Official Journal itself, as versions are occasionally corrected. The link is below.
This text is not legal advice. It reflects the state of September 2026.
Newsletter
New technical articles as soon as they are ready
About once a month: new articles, new calculators, what is moving in standards and packaging law – and offers from our range.