What happens to the product passport if my company closes?

What you must do concretely

What is expected of you

The ESPR links the obligations surrounding the digital product passport to the product, not to whether the company that had the passport created still exists. Article 10 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) sets requirements for the availability of the passport during the lifetime applicable to the product group, and this does not automatically change with the fortunes of the importer, manufacturer or distributor. For a company with 10 to 100 employees considering closure, merger or sale of a business unit, this means that the product passport is an ongoing obligation that requires separate attention alongside the usual steps of business cessation.

The obligation to ensure availability continues

As long as the tyres for which a passport has been created are on the market or remain in use, the obligation applies that the passport remains accessible. How long must a product passport remain available? describes the period expected for this product group. For a company closing its doors, this means in practice that there must be a solution for hosting that data — whether through a service provider such as tyrepas.eu, through an acquiring party, or through another arrangement.

The registration in the European register remains linked to the product

Article 13 of the ESPR governs the register of digital product passports. Once registered, a passport is recorded in the name of a product, with a reference to the party that created it. What is the registry of digital product passports and what do I need to enter in it? sets out what it contains. When a company stops, it does not automatically disappear from that register — the question is rather who from that point on is the point of contact for the data recorded there.

The QR code on the product must continue to point to something

A tyre that is already in the shop or on a vehicle bears a QR code that refers to the passport. How does the QR code for the product passport get onto my tyres? shows how that link works technically. If the underlying data is no longer accessible because the hosting party or the company behind the passport has ceased to exist, that QR code no longer works as intended — even though nothing has changed about the physical tyre.

Where things go wrong in practice

A number of situations recur among companies that stop or change ownership.

Insolvency without transfer of hosting. An importer becomes insolvent and the administrator focuses on inventory, premises and staff. The server space or subscription on which the product passports were running is not recognised as a point of attention and expires without anyone noticing — until a fleet manager scans a QR code months later and finds nothing.

Sale of the business unit without the passport data. When a company is taken over, the trading name, inventory and customer base are transferred, but no one thinks about who is responsible from the transfer date for the passports of the tyres already sold. The buyer assumes this "comes with it"; the seller assumes this is a technical detail that the platform provider will handle.

Termination of a service provider subscription upon business closure. A company stops all current contracts on the day of deregistration at the Chamber of Commerce, including the subscription with the party that hosted the passports — without realising that the obligation to ensure availability does not stop at the moment the company stops.

Lack of clarity about who owns the data. In a merger between two tyre importers, it turns out that both companies had passports created for partially overlapping products, without having previously established who would manage which passport after the merger.

No record of who is contactable after closure. A company stops, the owner retires, and there is no record anywhere of who a regulator or customer can contact with a question about a specific passport that will remain relevant for years to come for tyres in circulation.

What you can record

For a company that stops, transfers or merges, it is practical to have a number of matters recorded in writing beforehand:

• An overview of which product passports have been created, linked to which unique identification codes — see How do I assign a unique identification code to each product? for how that linkage is typically structured.
• An agreement with the hosting party (such as tyrepas.eu) regarding what happens to the subscription and data upon business termination, including who serves as the point of contact thereafter.
• A transfer document for sale or merger explicitly naming who is responsible for the continuity of existing passports from the transfer date onwards.
• A list of products for which data has been reused across multiple variants, so that a subsequent party understands which passports are related to each other — can I use the same data for multiple tyre sizes of the same model describes how that relationship typically looks.
• A note on registration in the European register, so that in case of transfer it is clear what adjustment is needed there and to whom the request must be submitted.
• For a trustee or liquidator: a brief explanation of the existence and purpose of this obligation, so that it is not accidentally treated as a regular IT contract that can be terminated without consequences.

These points do not prevent a company from ceasing operations or changing ownership, but they ensure that passports for tyres that have already been sold do not simply become inaccessible at the moment when there is internally no one left who feels responsible for them.