Passport contents

A passport has two parts. The first is a profile of the model, covering its identity, its materials, its origin and the rules that apply to it, and that part you collect once per SKU. The second is the diary of one unit, and that part fills itself from the events we already record when the item is received, labelled, shipped, returned or repaired. Most of the work is in the first half, and most of that work sits with your maker and your mill rather than in your ERP.

The profile, in seven groups

The profile is the part you collect. We ask for it in seven groups, because that is how the facts split between the people who hold them: identity, physical, compliance, materials and end of life, commercial, sustainability, and who made it. Packaging and where the data carrier sits on the product are collected alongside. Every field is entered once for the model, not once per item.

The consumer, the partner and the regulator read the same record at different levels, and you decide the view each of them gets. Nothing you enter reaches the public page unless you choose to show it.

Identity

The identity group holds your own SKU, the GTIN of the consumer unit, a trade-unit GTIN-14 if the product ships in cases, any marketplace EAN or UPC, and the maker's part number. There is one GTIN per SKU. It identifies the product. The serial added to it, the SGTIN, identifies the single item, and the passport is attached to the SGTIN.

A line with no GTIN yet can still be set up. We give each product a durable internal identity so a GTIN can be added later without reissuing a single label or passport. The maker's part number is on the list because most of the documents behind the other groups come from the maker, and the part number is how the maker finds them.

Compliance

This group asks for the eight-digit HS code, the country of origin, whether CE or UKCA marking applies, any dangerous goods class, and the safety certificates your category needs. It asks whether any REACH substance of very high concern is present at or above 0.1 per cent by weight, with the SCIP dossier reference where one exists, and for electrical goods it asks the RoHS status.

Nearly every field here has one right answer and a document behind it. For safety that document is a numbered certificate from a named issuer. Where a field does not apply, mark it not applicable rather than leaving it blank, because an inspector reads a blank as unknown.

Materials and proof

The materials group wants every material or fibre with its percentage by mass, summing to 100, and the recycled and biobased share. Then come the questions ESPR cares about after the sale: a durability metric, a repairability score, how many years spare parts stay available and where, public repair and disposal instructions, a recyclability grade from A to D, and the features that let the product be taken apart.

Recycled content is the field where the proof is most often incomplete. A claim needs a GRS or RCS scope certificate plus a transaction certificate for each lot. The scope certificate on its own says a facility is allowed to handle certified material, which says nothing about your shipment, and under GRS every facility in the chain has to be certified, not only the mill. Passport data from suppliers is the list to send so the proof arrives earlier.

A scope certificate proves the mill is allowed to make the claim. A transaction certificate proves your shipment deserves it.

Commercial, sustainability and maker

The commercial group carries the product name and the care instructions in each market language, the list price per market, the warranty terms, including whether the clock starts at delivery, at manufacture or at purchase, the warranty on refurbished or resold pieces, and the marketing assets. The price is kept for the record and never shown publicly.

Sustainability asks for the cradle-to-gate carbon footprint per unit, with the method used, WBCSD PACT, PEFCR or ISO 14067, and how much of that figure was measured from your suppliers rather than taken from industry averages. Energy and water per use are asked where they make sense. At company level it asks how many unsold units were destroyed in the year, why, and how many went to charity or recycling.

The last group names who made the item and where, the maker and the mill behind it. Brands can fill this group least from their own systems, because an ERP records the purchase order and rarely anything about the factory behind it.

Model, batch or item

Each fact lives at one of three levels. The profile lives at the model, identified by the GTIN, entered once per SKU. Proof that is issued per lot, the transaction certificate above all, lives at the batch. The diary of deliveries, returns, repairs and resales lives at the item, identified by the SGTIN.

For stock that is already made and not labelled at item level, a batch passport per lot is one of the levels ESPR provides for, where your product group's act allows it, and item passports follow for the production still to come. Passports are included in every plan, so neither route needs a second contract.

The public page

A customer who scans the code sees confirmation that the item is genuine, its custody state and its batch, and whatever you choose to add. They never see the purchase order number or the price. The scan opens the passport without being written to it and without collecting personal data. A reseller gets a more detailed view to authenticate a second-hand piece or a return. An authority finds the identifier, the provenance and the declared compliance without asking anyone for a paper file.