19th April 2025. That’s when the EU published detailed Digital Product Passport (DPP) regulation. Ten months ago. Most AV companies still don’t know it happened.
By 2027 – less than a year from now – if you’re operating equipment in the EU, you’ll need DPP-compliant asset tracking. Touring productions, cross-border hire, festival circuits – all of it.
We’re writing this because companies are finally starting to ask questions. But asking in February 2026 means you’re tight on time to build infrastructure and capture data before mandatory compliance hits.
The companies who started building their DPP infrastructure back in 2025? They have a year of documented asset history already. You’re starting from zero.
What do Digital Product Passports Require?
Digital Product Passports (DPP) are more than just paperwork. The regulation demands lifecycle tracking of assets: where they’ve been, what’s been done to them, their environmental impact, their repair history. This needs to be verifiable, auditable, and accessible to regulators.
The EU wants to know: Can this asset be repaired? Has it been maintained properly? What’s it’s carbon footprint? Where did it come from? Where will it end up?
This gets complicated when AV equipment crosses borders regularly. A speaker system might hit Germany, France, Netherlands and Belgium in a single month. Movements need logging. Inspections need recording. Repairs need documenting.
Paper trails don’t work at this scale. Spreadsheets updating manually don’t work either. You need infrastructure that captures this data automatically.
Why your current system won’t cut it
Most AV hire companies still use barcodes or manual logging. Here’s the problem:
Barcodes need line of sight. Scanning 500 cables returning from a festival, one by one, takes hours. You’re not going to maintain that discipline when you’ve got another event loading out tomorrow.
Barcodes peel off. Outdoor festivals, mud, rain, rough handling … barcode labels don’t survive. Missing labels mean missing data. Missing data means no DPP compliance.
Manual logs are skipped. Your crew is busy. Between load-in pressure and travel fatigue, “update the spreadsheet” falls off the priority list. Gaps in your asset history mean gaps in you DPP trail.
But the regulation doesn’t care that you were busy.
RFID: The infrastructure that makes DPP possible
RFID tags don’t need line of sight. Walk past a container with a handheld reader, and you’ve scanned everything inside in seconds. Equipment moves from van to venue to storage – all logged automatically.
The tags are waterproof (typically IP68), heat resistant, and are designed for metal mounting. They survive festival mud, touring conditions, and repeated handling. Your asset tracking doesn’t break down when conditions get rough.
But here’s what matters for Digital Product Passports: RFID creates automatic audit trails.
You tag your equipment once. From that point on:
- Every venue check-in gets timestamped
- Every inspection gets recorded
- Every movement gets logged
- Every status change gets captured
You’re not manually building a compliance record anymore. The system does it as you work.
How CheckedOK turns RFID data into DPP compliance
RFID tells you where equipment is. CheckedOK tells you what’s been done to it.
Say you tap an RFID tag a mobile device running CheckedOK. Instantly it’s:
- Full inspection history loads
- Maintenance records display
- Repair documentation appears
- Service intervals show
- Compliance status is clear and obvious
For a Digital Product Passport, this means you’ve got:
- Verifiable maintenance schedules (Can this asset be repaired? Yes, and here’s proof we’ve maintained it properly)
- Complete location history (Where has this been? Here’s every location)
- Environmental data (What’s the carbon impact? We know how much this item has travelled, and can show you on a map if you’re using BLE tags)
- End-of-life tracking (where did retired equipment go? Fully documented)
CheckedOK wasn’t built for digital product passports. It was built for equipment inspection and asset management. But because it captures complete lifecycle data automatically, it creates DPP compliance as a by-product. You’re not doing extra work. You’re using tools that already generate what the regulation requires.
What touring productions need to do now
Tag your high-value equipment. Especially anything with a battery, as that deadline is coming soon. Speakers, projectors, specialist cables, LED screens, cameras … the 20% of your kit that drives 80% of your revenue. These are the assets regulators care about most.
Start capturing data today. A year of documented history before mandatory compliance gives you an advantage. Companies scrambling in December will have no historical data. You’ll have detailed records proving proper management.
Set up inspection workflows. LOLER examinations, maintenance schedules, pre-use checks. These need to happen anyway for safety and insurance but capture them digitally in software like CheckedOK, not on paper that goes missing.
Test your cross-border tracking. If equipment moves between EU countries regularly, make sure your system logs those movements automatically. Manual border crossing records won’t work at scale.
The 2027 deadline is looming
Mandatory compliance begins in 2027. That’s roughly 10 months from now – not very long to get your house in order.
Here’s what you need by then:
- Unique identifiers, batch number and serial numbers on all equipment (RFID or NFC tags are an ideal, durable solution)
- Digital inspection and maintenance records plus audit-ready asset lifecycle documentation (including Declaration of Conformity, CE marking & technical certificates)
- Location tracking for cross-border movements (and additional environmental performance such as carbon footprint of manufacturing process)
- Full manufacturers details including material composition, recyclability and end-of-life disposal plan
Ten months sounds like a long time. It’s not. Procurement, tagging, staff training, data capture workflows. This process takes months to implement properly. Then you need several months of operational data before you can genuinely prove compliance.
Back in 2025, some touring production companies and hire firms saw this coming. They tagged equipment, implemented software – some adopted CheckedOK, others integrated into their existing hire platform – and they started capturing data.
Starting now (February 2026) means you’ll hit the deadline with minimal historical data. But starting in June 2026? You’re in trouble.
What does compliance with DPP typically cost?
The investment in RFID infrastructure and CheckedOK licensing varies by fleet size and operational needs. Most inspection businesses using CheckedOK report ROI from time savings alone within months.
The real cost is not being DPP-compliant when 2027 hits. Equipment that can’t prove its lifecycle history can’t operate in the EU. That’s not a fine. That’s your touring production stopped at the border.
Are you already behind?
We started this conversation back in 2025 after the regulation dropped. Most companies ignored it. Now the same companies are asking urgent questions.
Want to see how RFID + CheckedOK works for digital product passports? Visit us on stand 9 at Plasa Focus Leeds, 12th & 13th May 2026 for an in-person demo or book a consultation today and get your infrastructure running before you run out of time.