French UIN and IDU: Obtain, Verify and Display

ADEME's French pages use IDU, short for identifiant unique. Its official English page translates the same term as Unique Identification Number, or UIN. Marketplaces and service providers often use UIN, UID or IDU, but the operational question is always the same: which ADEME number belongs to which producer and which French EPR scheme?

ADEME issues an identifier to one producer for one scheme. A seller with household packaging, electrical equipment and batteries may therefore need three separate numbers. A parent company number cannot automatically be used by a subsidiary, and one packaging number does not cover textiles, furniture or electronics. Start with the exact legal entity and the product-scope map, not the marketplace account.

Our French producer registration and UIN service coordinates this entity-by-scheme file, from the product scope and eco-organisation route to the resulting identifier evidence.

List every legal entity that manufactures, imports, sells under its own brand or sells products remotely into France. For each active SKU, identify the product, included components and packaging, then determine who first places each covered element on the French market. A supplier may be the producer for one item while the seller becomes producer for packaging or a private-label product.

Use a scheme-by-SKU review rather than a catalogue headline. The French EPR SKU decision guide shows how to separate electrical equipment, batteries, packaging and other product streams. Resolve exclusions and unknown product facts before submitting a membership file; otherwise the issued IDU may not cover the range being sold.

ADEME states that an IDU is obtained after joining an eco-organisation or creating an approved individual system. In the collective route used by most businesses, the eco-organisation registers its member in SYDEREP and communicates the IDU. The producer cannot bypass that route by registering individually in SYDEREP. An approved individual system follows its separate ministry and ADEME process.

A business that sells another producer's product without itself becoming producer should obtain the relevant supplier IDU rather than inventing or borrowing a number. Article L541-10-10 requires the seller to communicate, on request, the identifier of the producer that fulfils the EPR obligations for the product.

ADEME lists the company name, full postal address, telephone, website where one exists and relevant approval categories among the registration data. French companies are identified with their legal category, SIRET and NAF code. EU companies use their intra-Community VAT number. Other non-resident companies use the relevant home-country tax registration number when they do not have an intra-Community VAT number.

Copy identifiers from an official company or tax document, preserve leading zeroes and use one spelling of the legal name. Do not substitute a brand, trading name, marketplace store or group parent. If the registration document, eco-organisation account and sales contract point to different entities, resolve that conflict before the IDU is submitted anywhere.

Use ADEME's public producer search for an individual review and the daily SYDEREP dataset for controlled bulk checks. Search by the full IDU where possible, then compare the company identifier and scheme. A company-name match alone is weak evidence because names can be shared, abbreviated or changed.

Record the verification date, search value and result. The dataset is updated daily from eco-organisation and individual-system updates, so a fresh registration may not appear instantly. If a result is missing, recheck the exact identifier and legal entity, confirm the eco-organisation notice and escalate the discrepancy instead of replacing the number with a similar result.

Treat registration identifiers as text in exports. ADEME warns that opening the CSV in Excel can alter the default display of SIRET values. Preserve the raw file and import identifier columns as text so leading zeroes and long numbers are not silently changed.

The check is complete only when the identifier, legal entity and scheme align. Product categories and membership evidence then establish whether the registration covers the actual catalogue.

The IDU proves that the named producer is registered in SYDEREP for the specified scheme. Article L541-10-13 separately requires annual information for each product category, including membership or individual-system evidence and market-placement data. ADEME's public dataset also states expressly that its list does not show which producers have filed annual declaration data in SYDEREP.

For that reason, do not describe a visible IDU as proof that every SKU is correctly classified, all declarations are filed, all eco-contributions are paid or the membership covers every product category. Maintain separate controls for product scope, current membership, declaration periods, quantities, invoices, payments and corrections.

An IDU can also be withdrawn. In a collective system, the responsible eco-organisation initiates deletion; in an individual system, ADEME manages deletion after activity ends or approval expires. A monitoring register should therefore treat the number as current evidence that must be rechecked after membership, entity or catalogue changes.

Article R541-173 requires a producer to state the IDU in its general terms and conditions of sale or, where it has none, another contractual document communicated to the buyer. A producer with a website must communicate the IDU alongside the site's legal information. Article L541-10-10 also requires a seller to provide, on the buyer's request, the IDU of the producer fulfilling the obligations for the product.

Use a labelled list rather than an unexplained string of numbers. State the registered legal entity, scheme name and exact IDU. If a seller relies on an upstream producer, identify that producer and limit the response to the products and scheme covered by the evidence. Keep a dated page or document snapshot so the business can prove what was communicated.

Follow the marketplace's current compliance workflow and map each requested category to the corresponding French scheme. Amazon's current France guidance instructs sellers to obtain UINs for the products they sell and submit them through its EPR Compliance Information page. Preserve the submitted value, category, date and platform result, including any rejection reason.

Platform acceptance is evidence of that platform check, not a substitute for the underlying legal and operational controls. The same IDU should not be copied into every category, and a rejected value should not be changed until the legal entity, scheme and formatting have been reconciled. Re-run the platform review when products, accounts, responsible entities or membership change.

Use one row per producer entity and EPR scheme. Link the identifier to the product-scope register and keep the underlying files, rather than treating a spreadsheet cell as self-proving. Assign an owner and a review trigger so withdrawn numbers, renamed entities and new categories do not remain unnoticed.

A company outside France sells own-brand clothing directly to French consumers in branded mailing bags. The same foreign legal entity is producer for the textiles and the household packaging. Its scope review therefore identifies two French EPR schemes, not one general ecommerce registration.

After the appropriate collective memberships, the company receives one textile IDU and one household-packaging IDU. It checks each number in the ADEME data against its legal identifier and the correct scheme, records the product categories, and publishes a labelled two-line list with its legal information. Each number is then submitted only to the matching marketplace category.

The compliance file still keeps textile and packaging declarations, eco-contribution invoices and membership evidence separately. This is an illustrative control sequence, not a client case or a conclusion for every clothing seller.

Complete these checks before publishing or submitting any identifier, then repeat them after a material change.