New EU and UK energy labelling regulations bring changes for vending

The introduction of new Ecodesign & Energy Labelling Regulations in the EU and UK as of 1 March 2021 will bring ‘significant changes’ to the vending industry, according to the European Vending and Coffee Service Association (EVA).

The new energy consumption regulations enter into force on Monday 1 March, and will see the least efficient refrigerated vending machines banned from being sold in the EU and UK, while all new chilled machines will need to display an official energy label when sold.

As a result of the new regulations, refrigerated vending machines will have an official energy rating and be required to display this for customers/operators, while corresponding energy performance targets will progressively ban inefficient machines.

According to a statement from the EVA, the new official energy label (based on an A-G rating) will not permit any refrigerated vending machine to be better than a Class C at its introduction, and has been designed so that most machines ‘cannot be a Class A until at least ten years from now.’

The statement read: “Due to the inherent design differences between e.g. a closed front machine versus a glass-front machine, we know that different types of refrigerated machines will typically have different benchmark results. Indeed drum/carousel machines are not expected to achieve better than the lowest rating of Class G, while closed front can and bottle machines could for instance be rated D upon the label introduction.

“This will have huge consequences for procurement with many governmental and institutional buying guides currently requiring machines rated Class B or better. This is simply no longer possible and any guides not updated will need to do so immediately.

“As manufacturers must enter all machine technical details and energy performance on a combined European product database – with part of this available publicly – the best performing machines will be able to be easily viewed.”

The UK will introduce parallel Regulations for England, Scotland and Wales, but Northern Ireland will apply the EU Regulations – with the main visible difference in requirements being the flag on the label itself.