The food and beverage industry and the sector of great consumption (which encompasses all the products we buy in stores and supermarkets) warn that the new environmental laws preparing for this year 2022 will carry significant losses for the sector and will be a rise of
Prices, which will worsen existing inflation.

They are, in particular, two regulations that affect manufacturers and also supermarkets: the Law of Residues and contaminated soils, which aims to reduce the use of a single-use plastic.
Another is the bill of containers and waste, which mainly affects those that the food and beverage industry.

The first transpires a European directive and is in full parliamentary processing.
According to sources of the food and beverage sector, “it supposes costs for companies and the loss of competitiveness is great.”

It also includes a single-use plastic tax “that will have a brutal impact,” denounce these sources, and not contemplated any of the European laws.
“They have gone to maximum, the most expensive,” they say.

The law is concerned about organizations such as FIAB (the Federation of Food and Beverage Industries) and AECOC, the Association of Companies and Manufacturers of Great Consumption and that has more than 30,000 associated companies.

They calculate that the impact of this law and the aforementioned tax will be around 2,000 million euros.
The single-use plastic tax is valued at 600-700 million euros.
In addition, they predict a price rise.
“The costs go up, it will be inevitable.”

“There are measures that suppose a radical change in business models,” they say.
From FIAB, you can suppose the closure of half of the beverage companies, for example.
As the law obliges to reduce 50% of single-use plastic beverages by 2030.

“It means reducing the plastic bottles (recycling) that are in circulation in half, it is to reduce the business in half and it will be ruin for many companies,” explain these sources.

Most drinks are packaged in PET plastic (which are single-use, because it is not reused, but recycled to use it in other things) or in glass, which in this case is reusable.

The law that promotes is the reuse of containers “when the industry has been focused on recycling years,” insist.
The alternative to get into glass, ensure, is unfeasible because “there would be enough.”

There are products that can be sold in bulk, “and you can use your house bag, but others do not and reusable containers, Typer type, do not provide the same food security. It would have to be sanitized after each use. It is a dispense.
He has defined if these reusable containers have to be put by the industry, “they say.

“He has surprised us, we have been investing and working in the circularity for years and now they tell us that we do not have to bet on recycling but by reuse. The sustainability of small companies is put at risk, Sara de Pablos, President of AMBROS
, the Association of Refreshing Beverages.

This sector has already suffered a greater fiscal burden, after the rise of VAT to these 21% products just this year.
“In five years we can not change the production model,” he says.