Susan Slabbert (Henkel) on Digital Product Passport, EU Battery Regulation and Catena-X

Why are Digital Product Passports becoming important for industrial value chains?

Digital Product Passports are becoming important because transparency is rapidly evolving from a reporting requirement into a core business capability. Future industrial value chains will not only compete on product performance but also on the quality, availability and credibility of the information that accompanies those products.

As supply chains become increasingly complex, companies need a scalable way to exchange product, sustainability and compliance data across multiple tiers of suppliers and customers. Digital Product Passports provide a foundation for this by enabling structured, reusable and trusted information flows rather than fragmented, company-specific requests.

At Henkel Adhesive Technologies, we see Digital Product Passports as more than a regulatory development. They represent an important step towards connected, data-enabled value chains where sustainability, compliance, traceability and business decisions are supported by interoperable information exchange.

Why is the EU Battery Regulation especially relevant?

The EU Battery Regulation is particularly important because it is one of the first regulations that transforms transparency requirements into concrete digital information obligations across the value chain.

The Battery Passport demonstrates that companies can no longer look only at their own operations. Important information increasingly sits with suppliers, sub-suppliers and raw material producers. Economic operators remain accountable for compliance, but their ability to comply depends on effective collaboration across the supply chain.

For Henkel Adhesive Technologies, this is highly relevant because our technologies support complex industrial value chains, including battery-related applications. We believe the Battery Regulation is likely only the beginning. It provides an early indication of how future regulations may increasingly rely on trusted, digital and interoperable data exchange.

What role does Henkel Adhesive Technologies Procurement play in enabling supply-chain transparency?

Procurement is uniquely positioned at the intersection of suppliers, sustainability, risk management and digital transformation. As a result, Procurement becomes one of the key orchestrators of value-chain transparency.

Our role goes beyond requesting information from suppliers. We help create the conditions that allow transparency to scale across thousands of supplier relationships. This means aligning suppliers on expectations, promoting common standards, supporting readiness and facilitating collaboration across business functions.

Ultimately, Procurement helps transform transparency from a compliance exercise into a collaborative value-chain capability. The closer we can align suppliers around common approaches and interoperable data exchange, the more efficient and reliable the entire ecosystem becomes.

Why is supplier readiness so important for Digital Product Passports and Battery Passports?

A Digital Product Passport is only as strong as the information that supports it, and since much of the required data originates upstream, supplier readiness becomes a critical success factor.

However, supplier readiness should not be viewed simply as a data-collection challenge but rather an ecosystem challenge. Companies across the value chain need a shared understanding of what information is required, how it should be managed and how it can be exchanged efficiently.

Many suppliers support multiple customers and industries. If every company requests data differently, complexity increases significantly. The objective therefore is not to create more reporting work for suppliers, but rather to establish scalable approaches that allow information to move seamlessly across the value chain.

What should suppliers prepare for?

Suppliers should prepare a shift towards more structured, traceable, and reusable sustainability and product information.

In practice, this means preparing on three levels.

First, data readiness. Companies need to understand what sustainability, product and compliance information they possess today, where information gaps exist and which data depends on their own upstream partners.

Second, process readiness. Organisations need governance and processes that ensure information remains accurate, consistent and accessible over time.

Third, digital readiness. Increasingly, data will need to be exchanged in structured and interoperable formats rather than through manual questionnaires and spreadsheets.

Suppliers that begin preparing early will be in a stronger position to support customers efficiently and adapt to future regulatory and market expectations.

What value do Catena-X and industry collaboration bring from a Procurement perspective?

From a Procurement perspective, the greatest value of Catena-X is that it shifts the conversation from bilateral data requests to ecosystem collaboration.

No single company can solve Digital Product Passports independently because the required information spans multiple tiers of the value chain, and the challenge is not only about collecting data. It is about creating alignment around common standards, governance models and exchange mechanisms that can be adopted broadly across industries.

Catena-X provides an important foundation for this by enabling trusted and interoperable information exchange. This helps reduce duplication, improves consistency and creates a more scalable model for collaboration between suppliers and customers.

At the same time, initiatives such as Together for Sustainability (TfS) play a complementary role by driving alignment around methodologies, including areas such as Product Carbon Footprints. The future depends on both: harmonised methods for calculating data and scalable infrastructure for exchanging it.

What is the long-term value for Henkel, customers and suppliers?

The long-term value extends far beyond compliance.

For Henkel, it supports more resilient supply chains, better risk visibility, stronger customer collaboration and greater integration of sustainability into business decision-making. We believe that companies that prepare early will not simply be better positioned for compliance, but rather better positioned to compete in the market.

For customers, it provides access to more reliable and transparent information that can support their own compliance, sustainability and innovation objectives.

For suppliers, it creates the opportunity to share information once in a structured way and reuse trusted data across multiple customer relationships, reducing administrative burden while increasing consistency.

Ultimately, Digital Product Passports and interoperable data spaces have the potential to transform how industrial value chains operate. Organisations will spend less time validating and exchanging information and more time advancing innovation, circularity, decarbonisation and customer value.