The European Commission, which alone is the responsible arm of the EU for drawing up proposals for new European legislation, has made extended efforts to reduce the usage of plastics and came with the Single-Use Plastics Directive (EU).
The Directive provisions market restrictions on several single-use plastic products, including foamed polystyrene products made of expanded polystyrene (EPS). However, extruded polystyrene (XPS) which is used in the same single-use plastics products as EPS (thus not being differentiated) has been omitted from the market placement restrictions within the scope of the Directive.
As a consequence, in the process of the transposing the SUP Directive and in accordance with Annex B, the majority of Member States did not even mention the banning of XPS made products, only EPS single-use containers being banned in countries such as France, Germany or Spain.
The stress put on the global supply chain by the Covid-19 pandemic, the related scarcity of goods and the higher prices brought now by the war in Ukraine are serving as supplementary arguments for XPS products to still be used on short term in various EU markets.
In countries like Germany or the Netherlands, specialized companies have already informed their clients on alternatives for the products banned by the SUP, thus offering XPS as a replacement for banned EPS products.
Considering the global evolutions and the industry trends at European level, BFG Packaging has decided to offer XPS products to its customer. As such, BFG Packaging will ensure the availability of its XPS food packaging products not just in its non-EU markets, but also on the internal EU markets where this type of packaging can still be used, making sure that no shortages will emerge for its clients in the upcoming period.