IN Brief:
- PolyCert Food audits sites handling recycled plastic intended for food-contact applications under Regulation (EU) 2022/1616.
- Requirements cover traceability, quality assurance, good manufacturing practice, and critical control points.
- Certification operates on a three-year cycle with an initial audit, annual surveillance, and recertification.
PolyCert Europe has launched PolyCert Food, a third-party certification scheme for recycled plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food. The scheme is designed to give recyclers, converters and other operators an auditable route for demonstrating that their processes align with Regulation (EU) 2022/1616, which governs recycled plastics used in food-contact applications.
PolyCert Food is operated by PolyCert Europe and built around ISO/IEC 17065, the international standard used for bodies certifying products, processes and services. Certification is site-specific rather than company-wide, so each production location is assessed independently. The scheme runs on a three-year cycle beginning with an initial on-site audit, followed by annual surveillance and a full recertification audit at the end of the cycle.
The requirements cover traceability, quality assurance, good manufacturing practice and the identification and management of critical control points. Operators must be able to document recycled inputs and certified outputs through the material chain, including the origin and sorting of collected plastic waste. The scheme also requires documented procedures covering the recycling or conversion process at the certified site.
Those controls reflect the difficulty of returning recycled polymer to food-contact use. Waste plastic can contain contamination from previous use, collection or mixed waste streams, so a recycled food-contact material cannot be assessed only by its recycled-content percentage. The safety of the recycling technology, input stream, decontamination process and quality-control system also has to be demonstrated under the European regulatory framework.
PolyCert Food translates those requirements into an independent audit structure covering different parts of the value chain. Its scope includes collectors, pre-processors, decontamination operators, converters, recycling-technology organisations, food business operators and retailers. Responsibilities differ between those activities, but the common requirement is a documented chain showing where material came from, how it was treated and how conformity was maintained.
Recycled content is calculated in accordance with EN 15343, the standard used for plastics recycling traceability and assessment of recycled content. That creates a distinction between demonstrating how much recycled material is present and demonstrating that the resulting material is suitable for food contact. Both rely on traceability, but they answer different compliance questions and require different supporting evidence.
Independent certification bodies approved under the scheme carry out the audits. PolyCert says those bodies must be accredited to ISO/IEC 17065 and have appropriate competence in the plastics sector. Certified sites are then listed in a public register, giving customers and authorities a way to check whether a certificate remains current rather than relying solely on documents supplied by the operator.
The certification does not replace the legal framework established by Regulation (EU) 2022/1616. The regulation contains requirements for recycling technologies, recyclers, processes and decontamination installations, while official controls remain the responsibility of competent authorities. PolyCert Food adds a private certification layer intended to show that a site’s documented systems and operating controls align with the requirements relevant to its role.
That distinction will become more important as recycled polymers are used in a wider range of food packaging. Recent commercial developments have included rigid polypropylene packs containing food-contact recycled material, increasing the number of transactions in which converters, food businesses and brand owners need credible information about material origin, process control and certification status.
Supplier qualification can become complicated when recycled material passes through collection, sorting, recycling, conversion and packing before reaching the finished product. A harmonised audit scheme can reduce differences in the evidence requested at each hand-off, although a certificate cannot remove the need to assess the final material and article against its intended use, migration requirements and other applicable food-contact rules.
The first version of the PolyCert Food requirements, certification rules and auditor checklist is dated August 2026. That makes the current launch the start of a certification framework rather than evidence of broad market adoption. The public register and the number of approved certification bodies will provide a clearer indication of uptake as companies begin entering the three-year audit cycle.
PolyCert Europe has worked since 2020 on certification covering recycled content and traceability in polymer products. Moving into food contact raises the level of process scrutiny because recycled-content claims and food-safety controls have to operate together. The scheme’s usefulness will depend on the consistency of audits, the competence of certification bodies and the extent to which customers and regulators recognise the resulting certificates as reliable supporting evidence.
The launch gives the European plastics value chain another mechanism for documenting recycled food-contact operations as regulatory and recycled-content requirements develop in parallel. Its practical test will come as sites are audited, certificates appear on the public register and buyers begin using the scheme within supplier approval and food-contact compliance systems.
