Leading food and drink companies have warned the rollout of a deposit return scheme across the UK is heading for “chaos” with less than 50 weeks to go before the first version is due to go live.
Companies including Coca-Cola and Booker, said hopes of a joined-up approach across the devolved nations had virtually disappeared.
They warned there would be “casualties”, with some companies facing going bust because of the resultant extra red tape and costs.
Scotland is due to become the first country to launch DRS, on 16 August next year. The scheme’s administrator Circularity Scotland has faced a legal challenge from the Scottish Grocers’ Federation over the cost to retailers, as well as major unrest among both retailers and suppliers about the handler and producer fees involved and the inclusion of glass in the scheme.
Meanwhile, the Westminster government has still to publish its plans for the rollout, amid speculation DRS could yet be dropped as part of the “bonfire of red tape” being promised by Liz Truss.
Meanwhile ministers in Wales are backing plans for the rollout of a digital version of DRS, though The Grocer can reveal that plans for the biggest trial to date in the country have had to be put on hold because of “technical problems”.
Speaking at a GS1 Event in London last week, Julian Hunt, VP at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, said industry fears of a chaotic rollout that would cause huge extra costs for suppliers now looked set to be realised.
“I fear we’re going to end up with four different schemes that aren’t interoperable,” he said. “That’s going to lead to suboptimal solutions for the enviroment and business and poor outcomes for consumers.
“Our big message is we’ve got to find a way to get a system that works [across the nations]. I do worry that we are not going to get to that outcome.”
Hunt said the conveyor belt of ministerial changes in Westminster had been a significant factor.
“We’ve had a lot of delays. At one point we thought there was a drive to get to that alignment quite quickly but there’s been changes of politicians and government and it’s been very hard to make the right progress.
“We should forget there is a law in place and this is going to happen in Scotland in less than a year.
John Kane, director of programme management at Booker, predicted mayhem with hundreds of different companies needing different packaging and pricing across territories and whoelsalers facing huge extra administration.
“We are 47 weeks away from this thing happening in Scotland and the complexity and the lack of awareness by the people who are introducing the scheme keeps me awake at night,” he said.
“It is unnecessarily complicated because what we should have done is go together all at the same time.
“My concern is that there will be casualties in this and the time for talking, frankly, is almost past.”
With Scotland going it alone, Howard Davies, plastic policy manager at the Welsh government, said the governments in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were planning to have a single administrator to run all their schemes, though there were major differences in the plans. Wales, unlike England, was planning a so-called “all in” DRS including glass.
“The phrase we’ve coined is you can buy a can in Bristol and take it back in Bangor or Belfast,” said Davies.
The Welsh government is also an outlier because of its public backing for digital DRS schemes, seen as a potential way to save on the huge infrastructure costs of DRS.
However, a trial due to involve Tesco, Morrisons and Aldi, based on customers using a mobile phone app, billed as “by far the biggest trial of DDRS to date” has been shelved until after Christmas because of questions over the technology involved.
Duncan Midwood, CEO of Circularity Solutions, who is co-ordinating the trial, described the news as “very disappointing” but said stakeholders “remained supportive” and it would run in the new year.
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