Is Your Packaging in EUDR Scope? The New Packing-Material Exemption, Explained

Almost every company that sells a physical product ships it in something made of wood or paper. So the question arrives early and it arrives from everywhere: is our packaging in EUDR scope?

For two years the answer lived in guidance documents and FAQ entries - useful, but not the kind of thing a compliance lead enjoys building a control framework on. That changed in July. Alongside its update to Annex I, the Commission's 13 July 2026 Delegated Act "introduces targeted exemptions for specific categories of products, including waste, used and second-hand products, packing material, and products used in the manufacture of medicinal products" (European Commission).

That is a meaningful upgrade in legal certainty. It is not, however, a blanket exemption for anything box-shaped - and the distinction that matters has not changed at all.

One caveat before we go further: the Delegated Act has been sent to the European Parliament and the Council for scrutiny before entering into force (European Commission). Plan on it, but verify its final status before you close out a scope assessment. We covered the full set of Annex I changes in our post on what the 13 July delegated act decided.

The line is function, not material

Here is the whole thing in one sentence: packaging used exclusively to support, protect or carry another product is out of scope; packaging placed on the market as a product in its own right is in scope if its code sits in Annex I.

The same physical object can be on either side of that line depending on what it is doing.

The object	The situation	In scope?
Corrugated shipping box	Containing shoes, sold to a consumer	No - it is packing material
Corrugated shipping box	Flat-packed, sold in bulk to a business that will pack things in it	Yes - the box is the product
Wooden pallet	Under a load of tinned goods	No - packing material
Wooden pallet	Sold by a pallet manufacturer to a logistics company	Yes - the pallet is the product
Paper carrier bag	Handed over at the till with a purchase inside	No
Paper carrier bag	Sold in a pack of 500 to a retailer	Yes
Returnable plastic crate	Any situation	No - plastic is not an EUDR commodity at all

If you take one thing from this post, take that table. Most scope arguments inside companies are resolved by asking a single question: is this thing being sold, or is it carrying something that is being sold?

Two edge cases worth naming. Reusable and returnable packaging that was originally placed on the market as a standalone product carries the obligations attached to that first placing; once it is in service as packaging, it is functioning as packing material. Printed inserts, leaflets, instruction manuals and point-of-sale displays are the genuinely grey area - a display stand is arguably not supporting, protecting or carrying anything, and a printed catalogue is clearly a product. Treat these individually and document the reasoning rather than assuming they follow the box.

When packaging is the product: which materials are covered

If you manufacture or import packaging as a product, the question becomes which of your codes are in Annex I.

• Paper, paperboard and corrugated board sit in CN chapter 48. Products in this chapter are in EUDR scope where they fall within Annex I and contain virgin wood fibre.
• Wooden packaging, pallets, cases, crates and drums sit in CN chapter 44, the wood chapter.
• Plastic, glass, metal and textile packaging are not EUDR-relevant at all. The Regulation covers seven commodities - cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood (European Commission). Nothing else. A glass jar is out of scope no matter what.

Work from your own eight-digit CN codes, not from your supplier's six-digit HS codes, and not from a product description. The seam between HS-6 and CN-8 is where most scope errors are born - see our post on EUDR customs codes for why that mapping deserves its own owner.

Recycled and recovered material: the case that matters most

This is where the real money is, because most packaging fibre in Europe is at least partly recycled.

Annex I carries an explanatory note excluding goods made from material that has completed its lifecycle - the recovered and recycled material position. It is concrete enough that customs authorities have a code for it: Finnish Customs lists Y133, "exception granted based on the second explanatory note in Annex I," for declaring goods manufactured from material that has completed its lifecycle (Finnish Customs). The 13 July Delegated Act's targeted exemption for waste points the same direction (European Commission).

The operative word, though, is entirely. The exemption applies to product made wholly from recovered material. It does not apply to a furnish that is 80% recycled and 20% virgin kraft - which describes an enormous share of real-world board.

Three practical consequences:

1. Mixed furnish is in scope, at full strength. There is no partial exemption and no de minimis threshold that lets a small virgin fraction ride along. If virgin fibre is in the product, the product needs due diligence covering that fibre - which means geolocation back to the forest.

2. A recycled claim is a claim you must be able to substantiate. "Our supplier says it's recycled" is not evidence. What a converter should hold: a mill-level declaration of furnish composition, the grade specification, batch or delivery-level records tying furnish to output, and a supplier contract that obliges notification if the furnish changes. Grades get substituted when markets move, and nobody thinks to tell compliance.

3. Both pre- and post-consumer waste count. Recovered material is not limited to post-consumer streams; production offcuts and converter waste re-entering the fibre loop are recovered material too.

The single highest-value action for a packaging buyer this quarter is to ask every board supplier one question in writing: what percentage of virgin wood fibre is in this grade, and will you notify us if that changes? The answers will sort your portfolio into in-scope and out-of-scope faster than any other exercise.

Bamboo, rattan and the not-actually-wood list

A recurring surprise: several fibres that look like wood are not treated as wood for EUDR purposes.

The Commission clarified in its FAQ that products made exclusively from bamboo do not fall within EUDR scope, and the delegated act on product scope expressly excludes bamboo, rattan, reeds, rushes, willow rod, raffia and cleaned cereal straw from the wood scope. This matters commercially - bamboo packaging, moulded straw trays and rattan product supports are all outside the Regulation on this basis.

Two warnings. First, "exclusively" is doing work again: a bamboo box with a wood-fibre label liner is not exclusively bamboo. Second, FAQ numbering and content have shifted across versions, so cite the current Commission FAQ version in your file rather than a version number you read in a blog post - including this one.

It is worth being explicit that the packaging exclusion originated as an interpretation in the Commission's Guidance and FAQ rather than as a line of the Regulation's operative text. The 13 July Delegated Act moves it onto firmer ground. Until that Act completes scrutiny, record both bases in your assessment.

Who actually carries the obligation

Along a packaging chain - forest, pulp mill, paper mill, converter, brand owner, retailer - the obligation does not sit everywhere.

The due diligence statement is filed by the operator who first places the in-scope product on the EU market. For imported board, that is typically the importer. For EU-manufactured board from EU-grown fibre, it is the mill. Everyone downstream is a trader or a downstream operator, with materially lighter duties built around referencing the upstream statement rather than filing a new one. Our posts on operator versus trader and on downstream operators set out which category you are in.

The practical implication for a brand owner: if you buy finished packaging from an EU converter who bought EU board, you are probably not the first operator, and your job is to obtain and retain the reference - not to build a forest traceability programme. If you import boxes directly from outside the EU, you probably are the first operator, and your job is very different. Get this classification right before you build anything, because the two answers cost about two orders of magnitude apart.

Audit your packaging portfolio in a week

A realistic five-step exercise:

1. Inventory by CN-8 code. Pull every packaging item you buy or sell with its eight-digit code. Not descriptions - codes.
2. Split by function. Two columns: sold as a product, versus used to support, protect or carry our own goods. The second column is largely done.
3. Filter to chapters 44 and 48. Everything plastic, glass, metal or textile drops out immediately.
4. Flag virgin fibre. For what remains, get written furnish composition from the mill. Anything not entirely recovered material stays in scope.
5. Classify your role per flow. First operator, trader, or downstream operator - per supply route, not per company.

What is left after step five is your actual EUDR packaging exposure. For most consumer-goods companies it is dramatically smaller than the initial panic suggested. For packaging manufacturers and distributors, it is the core of the business.

The five mistakes we see most

• "All our packaging is exempt." True for packing material; false the moment you sell packaging, or import it as a product.
• "All cardboard is covered." False. Function first, then chapter, then furnish.
• "It's recycled, so we're fine." Only if it is entirely recovered material, and only if you can prove it.
• "Our converter handles compliance." Your converter handles their obligation. Whether you have your own depends on your role in the chain, not on their goodwill.
• "We'll check scope once." Annex I changed in July 2026 and will change again. Newly added products only become subject to the Regulation from 30 December 2027 (European Commission), so scope has more than one switch-on date.

The Regulation applies from 30 December 2026 for large and medium-sized operators and traders, and for micro and small operators already covered by the EU Timber Regulation, and from 30 June 2027 for other micro and small operators (European Commission). Which means the packaging question is not a 2027 question. It is a this-quarter question, and for most companies it has a shorter answer than they fear.