The Flexible Plastic Fund (FPF) has called on the government to publish a phased transition plan for flexible plastic collections, warning that Defra's decision to defer the mandatory kerbside deadline from March 2027 to 1 April 2030 risks deterring investment in domestic recycling capacity.

The fund, which ran the UK's largest household collection trial for flexible plastics, said it had not been consulted ahead of the decision. Gareth Morton, Discovery Manager at compliance scheme Ecosurety and FPF Lead, said Defra's claimed "extensive engagement with the sector" had not included the fund "despite holding the most comprehensive evidence base on how to make household collections of flexible plastics work effectively."

FlexCollect, the FPF's three-year pilot, collected more than 400 tonnes of flexible plastic packaging from 160,000 households across ten local authority areas between 2022 and 2025. Its final report, published in September 2025, recorded participation rates averaging 60 per cent, household satisfaction of 89 per cent and contamination below ten per cent. According to FPF, 70 per cent of English local authorities had indicated they would introduce flexible plastics collections by the original 2027 deadline.

A sudden shift to 2030 risks leaving councils already preparing without clarity on next steps, the fund argues, while weakening the investment case for sorting and reprocessing infrastructure needed to handle projected annual collection volumes above 150,000 tonnes. UK reprocessing capacity for flexible plastics sits at between 25,000 and 50,000 tonnes a year, according to FlexCollect data, and only 16 per cent of local authorities currently tell residents they can recycle plastic films at kerbside, according to RECOUP.

The FPF is pressing for a delivery roadmap setting out local authority readiness, milestones and responsibilities. It wants greater transparency on how Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees are being used to support the rollout of household collections, and continued recognition of front-of-store collection points during the delay period so that producers are not penalised while kerbside services remain unavailable nationally.

"A three-year delay does not simply pause progress; it risks destroying investor confidence at the very point when the UK needs to scale up its domestic reprocessing capacity," said Gareth Callan, UK Packaging Sustainability Lead at PepsiCo and FPF spokesperson. Callan said the fund looked forward to working with Defra in the autumn "to agree how organisations across the recycling system can continue building collection, sorting and recycling capacity over the next three years rather than leaving the sector facing a single, high-risk deadline in 2030."

A successor project, FlexCircular, launched in June 2026 to quantify the investment needed to process up to 400,000 tonnes of post-consumer flexible packaging annually. Run by SUEZ, CEFLEX, WRAP and RECOUP with input from Defra and the devolved governments, the project is due to report later this year. Its scope covers the number and type of recycling facilities required, capital investment estimates and policy mechanisms to support domestic processing over export.

The FPF was founded by Ecosurety in collaboration with Mars, Mondelez International, Nestle, PepsiCo and Unilever.