A provenance mark is not a digital product passport

No New Zealand provenance mark, including the FernMark, supplies the structured product data that a European digital product passport must hold.

The two things answer different questions. A provenance mark tells a shopper that a product is genuinely from New Zealand. A passport holds structured product data for a machine, a regulator, a recycler and a repairer. A rule for each product group sets the fields, and no such rule is adopted yet.

A European buyer asks you for sustainability information about the product. A licence to use a mark answers none of that. If you offer the mark as the answer, the buyer asks again, and you must still find the records.

A mark and a passport are built for different readers

Neither one substitutes for the other. A licence is evidence that you met a programme's conditions. It is not evidence of anything a passport asks for.

A QR code beside a mark does not change this. If the code opens a brand page, it is a brand page. The passport is the structured data, and the code is only the way to reach it. See what a digital product passport is and what a passport is not.

The two schemes have never been connected in print

This site searched 104 New Zealand pages on 16 August 2026. Not one of them connects a provenance scheme to the European passport rules.

This site searched for New Zealand material on 16 August 2026, in fifteen separate searches, and read 104 separate pages. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote the substantial government account, in a market report of October 2025. See what New Zealand agencies have said.

That report names Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. It tells exporters to learn the new rules. It also tells them to set up data tracking and reporting systems.

EU Circular Economy: [Ecodesign, Digital Product Passports, and Green Public Procurement](https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/trade/mfat-market-reports/eu-circular-economy-ecodesign-digital-product-passports-and-green-public-procurement)

Nothing else in New Zealand government material covers passports. Three absences matter to you if you hold a provenance licence.

This site searched 104 New Zealand pages, and two things did not come back from any of them.

• An account of how to build, host or resolve a passport for the EU registry.
• A cost estimate for a New Zealand exporter.

A third gap has closed. Industry bodies do publish now: HERA on a digital steel passport, and LASRA for the leather sector. Neither writes for a provenance licence holder. See what New Zealand industry has published.

The trade agreement does not connect the two either. The New Zealand-EU Free Trade Agreement has been in force since 1 May 2024, and it contains no digital product passport provision.

This page does not state the FernMark programme rules

This site publishes a rule only after somebody reads the source. Nobody here has verified the FernMark programme pages.

So this page does not restate the eligibility conditions, the licence terms or the assessment criteria. Read those at the programme itself. This page states one fact. A provenance licence does not meet a European passport requirement.

Your provenance records can be reused, but the licence cannot

As at August 2026 the European Commission has adopted no product group rule under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. So no adopted rule lists the fields of any passport yet. Nobody can tell you today if origin will be a required field for your product. See how to read the timeline and which products need a passport, and when.

Every provenance claim comes from records: which farm, which mill, which batch, which supplier document, and which date. Those records are the part a buyer can check, and the part a passport could carry.

Ask if the data behind your claim is written down well enough to use twice.

• Name the record that proves each origin claim.
• Name the owner of the record, and the person who approves a change.
• Name the current version, and the place where it is kept.
• Name the date when the certificate behind it expires.

This work is useful even if no European rule ever reaches your product. See first steps for a New Zealand exporter.

What reaches a New Zealand exporter first is a buyer request

A question from a buyer arrives before a law does.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade reported on corporate sustainability due diligence in October 2024. European buyers covered by those rules may ask New Zealand suppliers for sustainability information. The report names that request as the indirect route by which European rules reach a New Zealand supplier.

For one product the list is already written down. Before a European importer places an e-bike battery on the market, it must check the manufacturer's work. The check covers:

• the declaration of conformity
• the technical documentation
• the conformity assessment
• the CE mark
• the marking and labelling

A provenance licence is not on that list. The same battery must also have a passport from 18 February 2027. That duty comes from the battery regulation, which is in force. It is the first binding passport duty in European law. See what a non-EU exporter must supply.

If you export manuka honey or a carton of Marlborough wine, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation does not reach your product. Food is excluded from that regulation, and drink counts as food. Your packaging is a separate product with its own rule. See food and feed are excluded and does my food product need one.

Keep your provenance work, and do not buy a passport system

Keep it. A provenance licence creates no European passport duty, and it removes none.

1. Do not buy a passport system because you hold a provenance licence.
2. List the records behind each origin claim, and name an owner for each one.
3. Ask your European buyer what evidence they want, and in what form.
4. Agree in writing who supplies each item, and who updates it.

See agreeing data duties with your EU importer and what this means for New Zealand exporters.

A mark tells a shopper where the product comes from. The records behind the mark are what a buyer, a regulator or a passport can use.