Step 7
Cost & funding
Implementation cost is driven less by the DPP itself than by the data quality of your supply chain. Below is a rough planning baseline based on published case studies and Foundation working-group inputs. Your numbers will differ — calibrate against a concrete pilot before committing a budget.
Order-of-magnitude bands
| Company size | One-off build | Annual run |
|---|---|---|
| SME (1 product family) | €30k – €150k | €10k – €40k |
| Mid-size (≤ 10 families) | €250k – €1M | €80k – €250k |
| Enterprise (multi-sector) | €2M – €10M+ | €500k – €3M+ |
Bands exclude supply-chain remediation (often the biggest cost) and carrier/labelling changes.
EU funding programmes
- Digital Europe Programme — funds reference DPP infrastructure (e.g., CIRPASS). Calls for SMEs and consortia open yearly.
- Horizon Europe (Cluster 4 & 6) — research and innovation funding on circular economy and industrial data spaces.
- LIFE Programme — circular-economy deployment grants, especially for SMEs.
- InvestEU — risk-sharing debt/equity for green transition investments, including digital infrastructure.
- Recovery and Resilience Facility — national allocations that often include DPP or circularity envelopes.
Build vs buy
For a single sector in scope and a small portfolio, buying from a DPP service provider is usually faster and cheaper. For multi-sector portfolios, serialised high-value products, or companies with strong in-house engineering, a build-on-open-source approach (CIRPASS reference + GS1 Digital Link + internal resolver) is often the lower total-cost-of-ownership option. Either way, treat the resolver as a long-term critical system.