I had the privilege of attending the Sustainable Packaging Summit in Utrecht, Amsterdam alongside Kellie Northwood, CEO of the Visual Media Association and Renata Daudt, Founder of Awen Consulting. Delivered by the Packaging Europe team led by Tim Sykes, this summit provided a global perspective across the supply chain.
It was a defining moment a chance to hear directly from those shaping Europe’s regulatory, economic, and circular future.
A stand out panel entitled Strategic Outlook: Leaders of Business and Regulation
The panel (pictured above), led by Hans van Bochove (Heineken), brought together a remarkable group of thought leaders: Yoni Shiran (Systemiq), Francesca Stevens (EUROPEN), Massimiliano Di Domenico (Mondelēz International), Juan Manuel Gómez Romero (Amazon), and the EU Commissioner, Jessika Roswell.
Together, they unpacked the intersection of policy, competitiveness, and the circular economy, and what the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) truly represents: not a packaging reform, but a system reform.
Circularity as competitiveness
Hans van Bochove set the tone: the PPWR is one of the most ambitious and consequential reforms Europe has undertaken, touching every link in the value chain, from design and investment to waste infrastructure and trade. The audience poll revealed four dominant needs: clarity, certainty, costs, and data.
For Australia, this translates directly. We must treat our packaging reforms as system-wide transformations, aligning policy, infrastructure, and investment to enable business confidence and measurable progress.
Europe’s Commissioner: “Now is the Time to Actually Go Circular”
The EU Commissioner acknowledged that overlapping crises, energy, trade, and security have tested Europe’s competitiveness. Yet she was unequivocal: the green transition is essential for both environmental and business resilience.
Her focus was pragmatic: harmonisation across Member States, simplification without dilution, and evidence-based collaboration with industry. She urged businesses to provide concrete examples, not “fluffy words,” and to help regulators cut bottlenecks that block secondary material use.
What stood out for me was Jessika Roswell's willingness to hear and be present in the conversation on a public stage, addressing pain points and amplifying a dialogue towards true collective impact.
Australia can draw a direct parallel here: our own state-by-state divergence risks fracturing progress. National harmonisation in data architecture, definitions, labelling, and EPR is the cornerstone of a functioning circular system.
Competitiveness and sustainability: One goal, not two
Francesca Stevens (EUROPEN) delivered a powerful message: sustainability and competitiveness must advance together. Europe’s single market cannot succeed if fragmented into 27 mini circular economies.
Her call for EPR transparency, harmonised waste rules, and data visibility resonated deeply. We cannot transform what we cannot measure. For Australia, this means establishing one national packaging data backbone, ensuring EPR fees are earmarked and reported transparently to drive genuine circular outcomes.
Data, digitalisation, and delivery
Yoni Shiran (Systemiq) shared how the EU has achieved more circular progress in five years than in the previous thirty. He highlighted that regulation, when predictable and enforced, can unlock innovation across materials, AI, and advanced recycling. His message: progress depends on predictability, harmonisation, and investment-grade data.
Juan Manuel Gómez Romero (Amazon) added the digital lens, illustrating how complexity multiplies under fragmented systems with more than 200 EPR schemes across Member States. His call was clear: embed digital compliance by design, simplify administration, and co-design future compliance tools with the Commission.
For Australia, this is a wake-up call to accelerate a digital-first approach – from a unified EPR portal to verifiable recycled-content tracking and streamlined reporting.
A defining takeaway
In closing, Massimiliano Di Domenico (Mondelēz International) reinforced that sustainability is not a pause point, it remains central to competitiveness. He urged for urgent clarity in definitions, alignment across interlocking rules, and simplification of duplicative assessments – echoing the same barriers we face in Australia’s evolving framework.
The panel’s collective message was not “pick ambition or competitiveness,” but “do both with evidence.”
The closing note
Australia stands at a defining point in our own journey. We can move faster than the EU by embedding clarity, harmonisation, data, and digitalisation from the start, enabling industry to invest once, scale confidently, and prove that circularity delivers real jobs, resilience, and growth.
Congratulations to Tim Sykes and the Packaging Europe team for curating an outstanding and deeply insightful Summit – one that not only informed, but inspired.
