Compliance, Sustainability and Digital Product Passport
Product portfolio management has gained a new and lasting dimension in the last five years: regulatory compliance and sustainability data . Whether a product remains in the portfolio now depends not only on its profitability but also on its ability to meet the compliance requirements of the markets in which it will be sold.
Scope
Market-based compliance monitoring: Keeping records of which market each product can be sold in and with which documents, certificates, and declarations.
Material and substance traceability: Each component in the product tree must be traceable in terms of the restricted substances it contains.
Document validity management: Monitoring the expiration dates of certificates and test reports; issuing warnings about those nearing expiration.
Environmental impact data: Linking product carbon footprint and life cycle assessment data to the product record.
Repairability and end-of-life information: Spare parts accessibility, disassembly capability, recycling, and disposal guidelines.
Digital product passport preparation: Generating machine-readable information on product identity, material composition, performance, repairability, and end-of-life.
What is a Digital Product Passport (DPP)?
Under the European Union's Ecodesign Regulation for Sustainable Products (ESPR), products offered on the EU market are required to carry a digital identity record accessible via a data carrier (QR code, etc.). This record covers product identity and traceability, material composition and restricted substances, performance and durability, carbon footprint, repairability and end-of-life information, and certification records.
The regulation is framework-based; product group-specific requirements are implemented gradually through delegated measures . Initial product groups include iron and steel and certain white goods categories, while groups such as textiles, rubber, aluminum, furniture, electric motors, beds, and mobile devices will be introduced in subsequent years. The European Commission has launched a central registration system and testing environment for passport records in the summer of 2026, and has published rules on access management and technical architecture.
What it means for exporters in Türkiye
For Turkish manufacturers selling products to the EU market, this regulation is directly binding: the determining factor is not the origin of the product, but whether or not it has been placed on the market . Products that do not comply cannot enter the market, even if they are technically flawless.
The real challenge in the field isn't understanding the regulations, but finding the data . Material information is in the product tree, supplier declarations are in email backlogs, certificates are in shared folders, and packaging information is in marketing files. This disorganization turns compliance work into an archaeological excavation, starting from scratch each time.
Therefore, the first step in compliance preparation is not collecting documents, but gathering product data into a single structure . A business with a portfolio management infrastructure addresses the compliance obligation not as an additional project, but as a view of its existing data.
Benefit to the customer
Market access is protected.
Export losses are avoided due to lack of adaptation; the time to enter new markets is shortened.
The cost of compliance decreases.
Data is not collected anew for every audit and every customer request; it is generated from existing records.
Portfolio decision-making becomes richer.
The cost of fitting a product becomes a decision criterion alongside profitability analysis.