How do I document the provision of digital product passport data in my purchasing contract?

What you must do concretely

What is expected of you

As a tire importer or wholesaler, you purchase from a manufacturer, and that manufacturer is the one who produces the data for the product passport. But the obligation to ensure that this data exists and is correct also lies partly with you. This makes the purchase contract a practical instrument: it is the place where you specify who delivers what, when, and what happens if that does not occur.

Data from actors in the supply chain (article 38 ESPR)

Article 38 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) describes that actors in the supply chain — manufacturers, but also other parties that contribute to the production of the product — provide information needed for the product passport. For a company with 10 to 100 employees, this means in practice that the data does not automatically come to you: you will need to arrange something about this in the purchasing relationship. A manufacturer who does not yet have experience with the product passport typically does not provide a complete and correct file without being asked.

Obligations of importers (article 29 ESPR)

Article 29 of the ESPR describes the obligations of importers: anyone who places products from outside the EU on the market bears their own responsibility for the conformity of the product, including the product passport. For an importer with 10 to 100 employees, this means that it is not sufficient to rely on what the manufacturer outside the EU supplies — an independent inspection will be necessary before the product reaches the EU market. What this precisely means when importing from outside the EU is further explained on the page about what the product passport means when importing tires from outside the European Union.

Pass-through in your own chain

If you yourself also supply to fleet managers or other customers, you effectively pass on the obligation: the data you receive from your manufacturer must be available to your own customers as well. For a mid-sized company, this means that the purchase contract does not stand alone, but is part of a chain of agreements that runs from manufacturer to end user.

Where things go wrong in practice

A number of situations come up regularly in practice.

An importer concludes a purchase contract that only covers price, delivery time and warranty, and forgets that the manufacturer will also need to supply data that does not appear in a standard purchase contract. If that obligation is not explicitly stated in it, there is nothing to fall back on if the data fails to arrive.

A wholesaler assumes that "the manufacturer will take care of that", without an agreed moment to check this. The result is that the data sometimes only arrives when the product is already on its way, or not at all.

A company receives data from the manufacturer, but has nowhere documented who within the organization checks whether that data is also correct. Errors in, for example, tire designations or test results go unnoticed until a customer or supervisor raises the issue.

When purchasing tires that are manufactured in multiple factories — for example, the same specification, but produced at different locations — it is not documented how that data is combined into one passport per product variant. This is particularly relevant when purchasing from multiple production locations, a matter further discussed on the page about how you combine data from multiple factories into one product passport.

A contract is signed without agreeing what happens if the supplier stops supplying, changes manufacturer, or simply fails to deliver the data on time. Without such a provision, a purchasing party is left empty-handed when things go wrong.

What you can record

In the purchase contract, or in an annex to it, a number of points can be explicitly stated:

• A list of data to be supplied. What exactly is requested from the supplier is described on the page about which data you can request from your tire supplier. This list can be attached to the contract to avoid any misunderstanding about what "the data" precisely includes.

• A moment of delivery. For example: before the first delivery, or before the product reaches the EU market. The exact moment is up to the parties, but recording a moment prevents delivery from being put on the back burner.

• An agreement on verification. Who within your own company checks the delivered data, and according to which method, can be recorded in combination with the instructions on the page about how you verify whether your supplier's data is correct.

• A provision on modifications. What happens if the manufacturer makes a product modification that affects the passport? An agreement on notification obligation in case of modifications prevents a passport from becoming outdated unnoticed.

• An escalation route. What to do if the supplier does not deliver the data, delivers it late, or delivers it incompletely, is described on the page about what you can do if your supplier does not deliver the data. A reference to that route in the contract itself — or a comparable provision of your own — provides guidance at the moment things go wrong.

• A reference to the applicable legislation. The contract can refer to Article 38 and Article 29 of the ESPR, so that both parties know on what basis the obligation rests, rather than this being agreed only verbally.

• A provision on duration and archiving. Because the passport must remain accessible for a long period, it can be recorded who is responsible for keeping the underlying documentation available, also after the business relationship has ended.

For companies that are unsure whether these obligations already apply to their own product range, the distinction between "apply" and "not yet apply" is relevant: the question of whether the product passport already applies to your tyres also determines how urgent it is to include these agreements in new contracts now, or only at the next contract round.