Your packaging fees are going up. Some of it is avoidable.

Every component you put on the market now carries a recyclability rating. Green, amber or red. Red costs more, and the surcharge gets bigger every year until 2029.

Most producers have never seen the number broken down by component, so they have no idea which bits of their packaging are driving the bill.

Nearly half of all plastic packaging reported in the UK is currently rated red.

What red packaging costs, as a multiple of the standard fee

2026 to 2027

1.2×

Where we are now

2027 to 2028

1.6×

Same packaging, bigger bill

2028 to 2029

2.0×

Twice the standard fee

Work out your bill

One line per component, not per product. A jar of jam is three lines: the glass jar, the steel lid, the paper label. Two examples are filled in below so you can see how it behaves. Change them or clear them out.

If you are not sure of a rating: plastic film, pouches, wood and things like cork or textiles cannot currently be rated green at all. Glass, steel, aluminium and plain card usually can.

Whether this is worth your time

Being straight about it saves us both an email.

Worth a look if

You turn over more than £2m, handle more than 50 tonnes of packaging a year, and sell to households. You are already reporting, or you know you should be. Some of your range uses film, pouches, laminates, dark plastic or mixed materials.

Probably not for you if

You are under the thresholds, or everything you sell goes business to business. Non household packaging is not rated for recyclability, so there is nothing here to optimise.

The calculator shows the bill. Ask us what to change.

Send your packaging weights and we will send back a proper forecast. No sales call, no deck. Just the numbers and where the savings are.

Every component rated against the current methodology
Fees projected through to 2029 on published rates
The changes worth making, ordered by what they save you
Components with no evidence behind them flagged, because those default to red

FAQs

Where do these numbers come from?: The published PackUK rates for 2026-27, and the modulation factors set out in the government's fee modulation statement. They are labelled illustrative and rounded to the nearest five pounds, so treat the output as a planning figure rather than an invoice.
Does modulation actually raise what everyone pays?: No. It moves money around. The total pot stays the same, red pays in and green pays less. Which means the discount you get for improving your packaging is funded by producers who have not.
Why does the red figure jump so much?: The surcharge is phased. It sits at 1.2 times the standard fee now, then 1.6, then 2.0 by 2028-29. Nothing about your packaging has to change for the bill to grow.
We do not have the data for some of our packaging.: Then it gets rated red. Missing evidence and red are treated the same way, which is why patchy supplier data quietly costs money. Chasing it is usually the cheapest saving available.
Can you just do it for us?: Yes. Send what you have, however messy. The first version of the forecast is free and we will tell you honestly if there is nothing worth changing.