who is responsible for the passport if I produce in multiple EU countries

What you must concretely do

What is expected of you

A company that produces in multiple EU countries faces essentially the same question as a company with one facility: who is the manufacturer within the meaning of Article 27 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781)? The answer lies not with the facility, but with the legal entity. The obligations under the ESPR rest with the person who places the product on the market under his name or brand — and that is usually one legal entity, even if that entity operates factories in three countries.

The manufacturer remains a single point of contact, even with multiple factories

In practical terms, this means that a group with facilities in, for example, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands does not need to set up a separate passport process per country if those facilities produce under the same legal entity or the same brand. The obligation under Article 27 to ensure that the product is accompanied by a digital product passport (as described in Article 9) then rests with that one entity, not with the factory hall that happened to have extruded the profile. For a medium-sized company, this often means a choice: one central point of contact for passport data, with each facility submitting production data. Who that central point of contact is depends on how the company is legally structured — this varies by situation and is usually set out in the articles of association or in the way CE marking and other product obligations are currently being fulfilled.

Different legal entities means different obligations

It becomes different once the facilities in different countries are separate legal entities — meaning legally independent limited companies or partnerships that operate under a group name but make their own purchases, produce and invoice independently. In that case, each legal entity can be considered a manufacturer within the meaning of Article 27 for its own production, with its own obligation to supply passport data for what it itself places on the market. A group-wide approach is still possible — one platform, one template, one responsible department — but the legal obligation itself follows the legal entity, not the group logo. This distinction matters when answering questions about who is responsible for the product passport for aluminiumdata responsibility, especially when there is unclear within a group which facility supplies which part of the data.

Sourcing from a facility outside the EU requires a separate process

Some companies with EU facilities also have a production location outside the Union, for example in the United Kingdom, Turkey or further afield. For aluminium coming from that location into the EU, Article 29 of the ESPR applies, not Article 27 — the obligations of importers. That is a different role with different responsibilities: the importer checks whether the passport exists and is correct, but usually does not compile it itself from primary production data. Companies that produce both within and outside the EU are well advised to determine per product stream which role applies — that is a different question from the one addressed on the page Am I an importer or manufacturer under the ESPR but it is closely related to it.

Internal division of tasks must align with the legal obligation

In practice, many groups work with an internal division: the facility in the Netherlands handles purchasing and administration, the facility in Poland handles production, the facility in Germany handles sales. That division makes sense for business operations, but does not automatically cover the obligation under the ESPR. The passport must contain data that matches the actual production process — alloy composition, origin, recycled content percentage — and this data usually originates at the production facility, not at the facility that sends the invoice. A company that centralizes administrative responsibility must therefore also have a way to collect production data from all facilities and link it to the correct product.

Where things go wrong in practice

A number of situations occur in practice more often than expected.

First: a group assumes that because the head office is in the Netherlands, all passport obligations automatically fall there — while the production facility in another country is a separate legal entity that independently places products on the market. It then turns out later that the obligation did not lie where people thought.

Second: in a merger or acquisition, the legal structure changes, but the passport processes are not updated accordingly. The passport still refers to a legal entity that no longer exists, or the new combination has no clear agreement on who supplies the data.

Third: two facilities within the same group produce the same type of profile, but with slightly different alloys or different recycled content percentages, and one passport text is used for both. This results in a passport that is correct for one facility and incorrect for the other.

Fourth: a facility outside the EU supplies semi-finished products to an EU facility of the same group, and no one has established who in that internal flow fulfils the importer role. See also the situation described on My manufacturer is located outside the European Unionwhich can occur within a group as well, not only between independent companies.

Fifth: data is supplied per facility separately to a platform, without central oversight, so that the same product code in two countries is filled in with different data.

What you can document now

• An overview of the legal structure of the group: which locations are independent legal entities and which are part of one entity.
• Per product stream: who produces, who sells under its own name, and whether imports from outside the EU play a role.
• An internal agreement on which location or department collects the passport data and submits it to alupas.eu, including a fixed contact point per product line.
• A template for production data to be completed in the same way by all locations, so that alloy, origin and recycled content are comparable and verifiable.
• An up-to-date list of legal entities and Chamber of Commerce or trade register numbers, to be consulted in case of doubt about who fulfils which role — this aligns with questions that also arise in changing supplier, where the same question about legal responsibility recurs.
• Agreements on liability between group establishments in case of incorrect data, so that in the event of an error it is clear which establishment is the source of the information.