Lars Baumgürtel

Panel discussion | The digital product passport

With the Digital Product Passport, which the EU Commission will require for many product groups in future, more environmentally friendly products are to be authorised and placed on the market in the European single market. In future, consumers will be able to find information on the materials used in products, their origin and environmental impact, the lifespan and reparability of the product itself as well as its recycling options or - if necessary - its disposal in the Digital Product Passport. The EU Commission is specifying exactly what must be included in the product passport for different product categories. The first DPPs - initially for batteries - are to be made mandatory from 2026.

In the panel discussion, moderated by Thomas L. Rödding, Lars Baumgürtel together with Saredin Seine from Seine Batteriesysteme and Hennig F. Mettge from Masterflex will discuss the following questions, among others:

• What do I need to do as a company for the introduction?
• And by when?
• What impact will the digital product passport or its introduction have on my business/production processes, sales, marketing, etc.?

   

Short CV:

Lars Baumgürtel has been a managing director at ZINQ since 1992 and has been the sole shareholder of the fourth-generation family business since 2008. As a graduate of the double degree programme of the Otto Beisheim School of Management (WHU Koblenz) and the Lyon School of Economics (EM Lyon), his academic focus was on entrepreneurship, marketing and production sciences. The entrepreneur has decades of experience as a serial founder/company builder in international/European markets.

His expertise relates to industrial SMEs and family businesses in circular transformation as well as climate-neutral industry and competitive sustainability. In these fields of action, he is co-founder and spokesperson for several networks (InDUstrie, Transform to Zero in the Prosperkolleg, Klimahafen Gelsenkirchen) and supports the Ministry of Economic Affairs in NRW in the core team of the industrial dialogue and the Industry Pact. He accompanies key policy projects for the implementation of the circular economy as an expert and expert in parliamentary committees and in the EU Parliament (National Hydrogen Strategy, CO2 pricing/national emissions trading, EU Ecodesign Directive/Digital Product Passports, National Circular Economy Strategy). He represents the sector and industrial SMEs as a board member of the German Surface Technology Association, as a trustee of the Family Business Foundation and on the executive committee of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce North Westphalia.