May 15, 2026 Virtual Convening State of the Circle
The producer-supplier relationship may need to be reimagined.
Cost, performance, and compliance: tensions neither producers nor suppliers can solve alone.
The May 2026 EPR Readiness Circle surfaced one clear finding: producers and suppliers may need to work together differently than they do today. Both sides agree on the hardest packaging questions under EPR, and both face the same upstream blockers. But they do not agree on how engaged they already are, and neither side is yet using what the other one knows. Four findings explain where the relationship may need to be reimagined — and where coordination should start.
Producers and suppliers point to the same two hardest packaging questions under EPR: cost and feasibility.
This is the most concrete coordination opportunity in the data. On the packaging questions that matter most under EPR, both sides are already looking at the same problem — one they may need to work on together differently than they do today.
86%
say cost implications and tradeoffs are the least clear part of engaging suppliers.
71%
say the feasibility of alternative formats meeting performance requirements is the second-hardest.
67% & 67%
name the same two — cost-performance-compliance tradeoffs and format feasibility — as the hardest producer questions to answer.
When producers describe what feels least clear in engaging suppliers, cost implications and tradeoffs and format feasibility lead by a wide margin. When suppliers describe the producer questions they find hardest to answer, the same two top the list. Below those two, the rest of the categories cluster closely — but the lead signal is the convergence.
Survey
Where each side feels least clear.
Producers (engaging suppliers) and suppliers (responding to producers) converge on cost and feasibility.
Both sides agree on what is hardest. They may need to work on it together — differently than they do today.
Suppliers should be engaged early, before internal direction is set.
The intent is early engagement. The maturity lags behind it. And the two sides read the same relationship differently.
Two in three producers say suppliers should be brought in before internal direction is set. What is actually happening does not match that intent — and the two sides do not see the engagement the same way.
100%
Every supplier in the room rated producer engagement at 3 of 4 — underway across some formats. Not one rated it higher, and not one rated it lower.
0%
No producer placed themselves at strong engagement (4 of 4). Most landed at level 2 — early discussions, key questions still unresolved.
67%
Two in three producers say suppliers should be in before internal direction is set — shaping feasibility upstream, not reacting to a finished spec.
Every supplier in the room said engagement is already underway. Producers, looking at the same relationships, rated them lower and more inconsistently. None placed themselves at strong engagement. The intent and the maturity are out of sync.
Survey
The engagement gap.
Producers rating themselves vs. suppliers rating their producer customers. Every supplier chose 3. No producer chose 4.
Survey · Producers
Producers want suppliers in early.
Two in three producers want suppliers engaged before internal direction is set.
Before either side assumes the other has moved further along, both need a shared definition of what “engaged” means.
The biggest blockers for both sides sit upstream — outside either side's control.
Producers are blocked by regulatory uncertainty. Suppliers are blocked by producers who have not yet engaged. Each side is held up by something the other cannot fix.
The hardest supplier question for producers (71%) is not about packaging at all. It is regulatory and program uncertainty — answers neither the producer nor the supplier can supply. Suppliers, asked the mirror question, point to the cost-performance-compliance tradeoff (67%) as the hardest producer question they get. One supplier added plainly that many producers are not engaged on EPR at all.
A chain of waiting
Coordination cannot remove these upstream blockers. But it can stop them from multiplying at every link of the chain.
Suppliers hold feasibility knowledge producers are not yet using.
Suppliers' open responses read like a list of corrections — assumptions producers are making internally that suppliers already know are wrong. Pulling this knowledge in earlier would change the conversation on cost, performance, and packaging redesign.
Three corrections came up across multiple supplier responses:
This matters most in the performance-critical formats both sides named as the highest-priority topics for conversation and coordination — the formats most exposed to regulatory change:
This is the clearest coordination opportunity in the data. Producers do not need new tools to use it. They need to ask.
For the executive desk
Implications for leadership.
The producer-supplier relationship is earlier than it looks.
Suppliers feel more engaged than producers do. Before either side assumes the other has moved further along, they need a shared definition of what “engaged” means.
Engage suppliers before internal direction sets.
The questions producers find hardest — cost, feasibility, tradeoffs — are exactly the questions suppliers are positioned to answer. Engagement after the spec is set wastes that.
The spec-clarity problem runs both ways.
Producers struggle to define specifications. Suppliers struggle to get clear ones. A shared specification template would take friction out of every transition conversation.
The overlooked wins sit in plain sight.
Secondary and tertiary packaging, shrink-film optimization, and a shared message that infrastructure must be built together belong in producer planning now — not after primary packaging is solved.