IFCO expands role in France

France’s packaging story in France just got a lot more operational. IFCO, the reusable-crate pooling company that already sits deep inside fresh-food logistics, said on April 28 that it is strengthening its collaboration with Citeo Pro ahead of the July 1, 2026 start of France’s professional-packaging REP regime. Basically, this is the moment when “use a box, throw it away” stops looking like a neutral default and starts looking like a compliance problem. For retailers, growers, distributors, and packaging suppliers, the change is less about a new slogan and more about new reporting, new traceability, and new pressure to prove reuse at scale. ### What actually changed? France already had extended producer responsibility for household packaging. But the government has now built out a parallel regime for packaging used by professionals, folding in industrial and commercial packaging and bringing the framework into operational effect on July 1, 2026. The legal base comes from late-2025 rules, and the environment ministry says the scope now covers professional packaging not already handled under the household system. ### Where does IFCO fit? IFCO is not the regulator. It is the company arguing that its existing pooling model is exactly the kind of system these rules now reward. Its pitch is simple — reusable crates that circulate repeatedly, get collected, cleaned, and redistributed are easier to count, easier to trace, and easier to defend in a REP world than one-way transport packaging. That is why IFCO focuses on systems at scale. ### Who has to do new work? The burden lands on the companies placing professional packaging on the French market. That includes firms making, importing, or distributing transport packaging, grouped packaging, and sales packaging for professional use — things like pallets, crates, drums, IBCs, and big bags. From July 1, companies must declare packaging through an approved eco-organization or run an individual compliance system across the supply chain. ### Why does traceability suddenly matter so much? Because REP for professional packaging is not just a waste-fee system. It is also a data system. The ministry’s framework and the industry material around it both keep coming back to the same weak point — packaging flows are poorly monitored today, especially once they move between producers, depots, and stores. If you cannot show where packaging went, how often it was reused, or what happened at end of life, compliance gets fuzzy fast. ### Why is fresh food the obvious battleground? Fresh-food logistics runs on high-volume transport packaging that moves constantly between farms, distribution centers, and retail sites. That makes it the perfect test case for reuse — but also for failure. A reusable crate system only works if return, washing, redistribution, and data capture are disciplined. IFCO already operates in exactly that lane, so the company is trying — it is an inference, but it is a pretty direct one from the timing and the way IFCO framed the announcement. ### What are the actual targets? The big number is reuse. IFCO highlighted targets tied to broader European packaging rules: 40% reuse for transport packaging by 2030, rising to 70% by 2040; 10% reuse for grouped packaging by 2030, rising to 25% by 2040; and 100% reuse for packaging moving between sites of the same operator or partner sites. Even before those dates hit, the direction is clear — one-way packaging has to justify itself. ### How big is this shift in practice? Pretty big. The French environment ministry says the “other professional packaging” bucket — basically industrial and commercial packaging outside the earlier restaurant scope — represents about 7 million tonnes placed on the market each year. Citeo’s materials also point to weak plastic recycling performance, with plastics at 26% today, which helps explain why regulators are leaning hard to fix the problem. ### So what’s the bottom line? The news is not that IFCO won a contract or launched a new crate. It is that France’s rules are moving reusable transport packaging from “nice sustainability option” to “useful compliance infrastructure.” If IFCO can help retailers and growers measure flows, document reuse, and stay inside the new REP system, its role in France gets bigger fast.