must a subcontractor who processes aluminium for me also provide data

What you must concretely do

What is expected of you

A subcontractor who processes aluminium for you — cutting, rolling, extruding, anodising, or another processing step — changes something about the material. That is precisely the point at which the question arises of who must provide what data for the product passport. The ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) provides in Article 38 that actors in the supply chain must provide the information necessary to comply with the passport obligations. A subcontractor who adds to or changes the product falls in practice within that chain.

The subcontractor provides data about his own processing

The subcontractor knows best what he processes: which alloy comes in, what changes during the process, and what goes out again. For a company of 10 to 100 employees, this means in practice that not only your own production is looked at, but also what happens at the subcontractor. If, for example, a coating is applied there or an alloy is adjusted, that is data that must end up in the passport. Article 10 of the ESPR describes what a product passport must contain in terms of content, and a processing step that affects the composition or properties of the product is relevant for that.

You remain responsible for the end result

Although the subcontractor provides data, the party that places the end product on the market — often the principal — is the one who compiles and is responsible for the passport. This means that data from a subcontractor cannot stand alone: it must be incorporated into the passport that you are already building on the basis of data from your own supplier. This question directly touches on what you should anyway request from your aluminium supplier: the subcontractor is essentially an intermediate link that adds its own information to what is already coming in.

When importing from a subcontractor outside the EU, additional points apply

If the subcontractor operates outside the EU, an additional layer comes into play. Article 29 of the ESPR describes the obligations of importers, and these apply in full when processed aluminium is sourced back from outside the EU. Whoever sends material abroad for processing and re-imports the processed product is doing something legally comparable to an importer who sources aluminium from a foreign supplier. More about what that means in practice can be found at what the product passport means when importing from outside the European Union.

The data must be consistent with what is already in the passport

A processing step adds value, but must not render the passport unreadable or inconsistent. The subcontractor's data must align with the structure already established for the rest of the chain. That is the same question that arises when a product is further processed after initial manufacture: see for that what happens to the passport upon further processing. A subcontractor is in that respect not fundamentally different from a subsequent processing party in the chain — only the contractual relationship is different.

Where things go wrong in practice

A few situations repeatedly emerge at companies that work with subcontractors.

The subcontractor assumes the principal already has everything. Because the subcontractor works on commission and has no direct relationship with the end customer, he sometimes assumes that the data he himself holds — alloy, process parameters, origin of any material added — is not relevant to the passport. That assumption is incorrect as soon as his processing changes the product.

No distinction is made between "subcontractor" and "supplier". A company that buys raw material from one party and subsequently sends it to a second party for processing sometimes treats the second party informally, without the same attention to documentation as with the first. For the passport, that informal status makes no difference: the processing is a step in the chain, period.

The subcontractor's data arrives separately, without linkage to the rest. A batch number, a material certificate or a process report from the subcontractor is received, but not linked to the batch of aluminium for which the passport is being compiled. Later, it is no longer possible to trace which data belongs to which delivery.

When processing takes place in a third country, the import is overlooked. Material leaves the EU for a specific processing operation and returns — without consideration being given to the fact that this is an import movement with its own obligations.

Multiple subcontractors work on the same batch, and nobody feels responsible for the overall picture. In a chain with multiple processing steps — one subcontractor rolls, another anodizes — there is a risk that everyone looks at their own piece and nobody completes the puzzle.

What you can document now

• An overview of which subcontractors perform which processing step, and what effect that step has on the composition or properties of the aluminium.
• A standing agreement with each subcontractor on which data are to be supplied and in what form — comparable to the agreements you already make with a regular supplier, as described at recording the supply of passport data in your purchasing contract.
• A link between the batch or lot number of the subcontractor and the batch number you yourself use, so that data do not become separated.
• A check of the data supplied by the subcontractor, in the same way as you do with a supplier — see how you verify whether your supplier's data are correct.
• A standing procedure for situations with multiple subcontractors in one chain, so that it is clear who supplies which part of the data and who compiles the whole.
• A file per subcontractor with contact details, agreements made and documentation received, so that this can be retrieved when the passport is being compiled or checked.