Empties in Retail

[t_duyser]

We have some issues with empties management. Hope someone has a recommendation how we can improve the way we currently implemented it…

In the Netherlands we have deposit on all bottles made of PET material (PET = kind of plastic), with a value of 15 cents for all ‘PET-bottles’ of 0,75cl and smaller. And a value of 25 cents for all PET-bottles larger than 0,75cl. When the empty deposits are returned by the consumer, he/she will get the corresponding value back. We also have deposit on all bottles of glass, with a value of 10 cents per bottle.

In Belgium however there is no deposit on PET-bottles, only deposit on bottles made of glass (10 cents as well).

We face the following issues:

· Whether an article has a deposit value assigned to it or not, differs per country; however the Bill Of Material for Empties is assigned to an article and not to an article within a specific country or a formula. Consequence for Belgium is that on PET-bottles, a Bill of Material is assigned to the article, although deposit is not relevant for these items . Therefor the sales value of these deposits is initially set to zero for Belgium; because it is easy to make mistakes and/or to forget to lower the value, we would rather have the option to remove the BoM for Belgium.

· We assign deposit articles (empties) to every Unit of Measure (UoM): f.e. on the single bottle (selling unit), on the 6-pack (other selling unit) but also on the order unit. For each unit we have a separate deposit article with its total amount: f.e. a deposit article for a single bottle with value of 10 cents and another deposit article for the six-pack with a deposit value of 60 cents (instead of 6 times the ‘deposit article of the single bottle’ with value 10 cents).
By defining deposit values in the above way, we have several deposit articles with total amounts that can be assigned for different articles that are relevant for deposit: the deposit article with total value of 60 cents can be used as BoM for 4 x a small PET bottle (4 x 15 cents) but can also be assigned to a six-pack of beer with bottles of glass (6 x 10 cents).
As mentioned above, for Belgium we do not have deposit on PET-bottles, and if a category manager assigns the wrong deposit article (the one that is mentioned for glass) to an article that is sold in a PET-bottle, we are not able any more to reduce the deposit value for Belgium to zero…
What would be the best way of defining and assigning deposit values to articles that are sold in different countries where the regulation on deposit differs?

[GauravBh]

Hi All, We are also facing a similar issue with IS-Retail rollout in Nordics. Any pointers please?