Parent and subsidiary separately prosecuted for packaging offences

24 AUGUST 2010

The Packaging Regulations require companies or Groups of companies that meet the turnover and tonnage thresholds to register, either individually or as a Group. When a Group's obligated tonnage exceeds the threshold on an aggregated basis, then all subsidiaries in the Group that handle packaging, no matter how little, must register.

In an interesting case that seems to be a first, the EA have succeeded in separately prosecuting both the parent company and an obligated subsidiary where neither were registered. Under normal circumstances, it would be expected that just the parent company would be prosecuted, but in this case, both got hit with three offences for each of the two years they had not registered - 2008 and 2009.

The total fine for each was £2.46k with each also having to pay £1.2k in costs.