EUROPUR and its sister association EURO-MOULDERS held their 2026 annual conference in Antwerp, Belgium from 9 to 11 June, drawing roughly 550 attendees from more than 170 companies under the theme "60 Years Together: Ready for the Future". A dedicated panel addressed the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and its implications for furniture and mattresses, covering ecodesign, circularity, recyclability, digital product information and future performance requirements. A separate session brought together the organisations that govern mattress extended producer responsibility schemes in Belgium (Valumat), Spain (Ecocolchon), Germany (Matratzenverband) and France (Ecomaison). A product stewardship and EHS session covered diisocyanates, CertiPUR, critical substances, occupational exposure limits, exposure reduction in slabstock foam production and aprotic solvent substitution.
The association frames ESPR as a strategic issue for the sector rather than a compliance exercise, and the panel's scope explains why. Ecodesign, circularity, recyclability, digital product information and future performance requirements are not properties a mattress or furniture producer can bolt on at the end of a line; they are set by what goes into the foam and how the article is built. Once requirements of that kind apply to the finished product, the formulation decision made upstream turns into a market-access decision downstream.
The extended producer responsibility session is the nearer-term item. Four separate national schemes were represented, each with its own governing organisation: Valumat in Belgium, Ecocolchon in Spain, Matratzenverband in Germany and Ecomaison in France. For a foam or mattress producer selling across Europe that means four sets of rules, registrations and fee structures rather than one European regime. The conference also heard presentations on digital product passports and circular economy platforms.
The product stewardship and EHS programme covered updates on diisocyanates, CertiPUR and critical substances, preparations for future occupational exposure limits, exposure reduction in slabstock foam production and aprotic solvent substitution. Sustainability sessions ran through renewable carbon, bio-based adhesives, chemical recycling, low-PCF foam bonding, molecular circularity and bio-based silicone surfactants, while the automotive sessions covered end-of-life vehicle recycling technologies and polyurethane circularity. Taken together, the agenda is a fair map of the regulatory and technical pressure the European flexible foam industry sees coming.
Two caveats belong with this. It is the association's own summary of its own conference rather than independent reporting, and the published report attaches no regulatory deadlines to any of it. Even so, for a flexible or viscoelastic foam producer selling into Europe, and for the system supplier behind that foam, this agenda reads as a planning document. The ESPR line says that polyol choice, additive package and whether a foam can be depolymerised become questions of market access rather than of cost. The EPR line says an exporter should budget for country-by-country obligations rather than one European filing. And the stewardship line is a reminder that diisocyanate handling and occupational exposure limits remain open regulatory files.