PPWR and EUDR Together: Two Regulations, One Shipment

If your desk trades timber into the EU, you are now living with two regulations at once. EUDR governs the wood you sell. PPWR governs the wood you ship it on. Most companies treat them as two separate projects, run by two different people, on two different timelines. On a timber desk, that is the expensive way to do it.

The two rules were written for different reasons, but for a trader they converge on one point: the shipment leaving your yard, and the suppliers standing behind it. Handle them together and most of the work is shared. Handle them apart and you do the same work twice.

Same shipment, two regulations

Picture a single order: sawn spruce, strapped onto heat-treated pallets, corner-protected, wrapped, and loaded. EUDR looks at the spruce. PPWR looks at the pallets, the corner protectors, and the wrap. One truck, two regulatory lenses.

EUDR, the EU Deforestation Regulation, asks you to prove the timber is legal and deforestation-free, with the geolocation of the plot it came from and a Due Diligence Statement filed before the goods are placed on the market.

PPWR, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, asks you to prove the packaging around that timber meets EU standards for recyclability, restricted substances, and labelling, backed by a signed Declaration of Conformity. For a timber company there is a twist most sectors never face: your packaging is often wood too. The pallets and crates are themselves a product you may be placing on the market.

The same supplier request, sent twice

Both regulations push the real work upstream, onto your suppliers. EUDR needs plot geolocation, harvest legality, and species and origin data. PPWR needs material composition, substance information, and a Declaration of Conformity for the packaging. Different documents, but the same act: going back up your chain and asking a supplier for evidence.

Run as two projects, that becomes two onboarding emails, two follow-up cycles, two spreadsheets, and two rounds of chasing the same supplier who is already tired of forms. Suppliers do not experience EUDR and PPWR as two regulations. They experience them as you, asking for paperwork, again.

Run as one, you ask once. A single supplier onboarding step collects the EUDR evidence and the PPWR documentation in the same request, into the same record. Your follow-up energy then goes to the suppliers who have not responded, not to splitting one relationship across two workflows.

One document trail, two audiences

After collection comes storage, and here the regulations rhyme again. EUDR expects you to keep due diligence records for five years. PPWR expects the Declaration of Conformity and its supporting documents to be retained for five years for single-use packaging and ten for reusable. Both can be demanded by a national authority, and PPWR can give you as little as ten days to produce a Declaration of Conformity on request.

That is not a filing-cabinet problem, it is a structured-data problem. If the evidence lives in inboxes and folders named after suppliers, you will find it slowly, if at all. If it lives in one record per shipment, keyed to the supplier and the product, either authority can be answered from the same place.

The trap they share: you become responsible

Both regulations quietly move responsibility onto the importer. Under EUDR, if you are the operator placing goods on the EU market, the due diligence is yours, not your supplier's. Under PPWR, if you import packaging, or change it in a way that makes you the one placing it on the market, you can inherit the manufacturer's obligations, including issuing the Declaration of Conformity yourself.

We covered the PPWR side of this in our article on PPWR and your pallets. The pattern holds for both rules: 'my supplier handles it' is not a defence. If your name is on the placement, the obligation is yours. It is easier to see that once, across both regulations, than to discover it twice.

The 2026 window is one window

EUDR obligations are already in force for operators and traders. PPWR's core obligations apply from 12 August 2026. If you are building EUDR data collection and record-keeping now, you are most of the way to a PPWR process as well. The mistake is to close the EUDR project, breathe out, and open a fresh, unconnected packaging project in the summer. The plumbing is the same: collect supplier evidence, store it per shipment, produce it on demand.

Who should own this

The instinct in most companies is to split it: sustainability takes EUDR, procurement or packaging takes PPWR. On a timber desk that split runs straight through one shipment and one supplier relationship. It is worth resisting. Give both regulations to whoever owns supplier data, and let the compliance work follow the shipment, not the org chart.

How Timberhub fits

This is the logic behind Timberhub's move from a marketplace into a compliance hub. The platform already sits between you and your suppliers, which is exactly where both regulations do their work. Supplier evidence is collected once, the EUDR Due Diligence Statement is generated from it, the packaging documentation lives in the same record, and the full trail is ready when an authority asks, for either regulation.

You do not need two systems, two data-collection efforts, or two versions of the truth. One shipment, one supplier, one record, answering to both.