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The member is referring to the NatureScot agreement with Hampden & Co. As he suggests, that is an investment model that is based on a bridging loan from Hampden & Co to a private land owner to support that private land owner in creating woodland. The loan bridges the gap between the initial investment and the flow of carbon revenue. That is a way of helping private land owners do that woodland generation.

As the member will know—or she might not have been present for the committee’s evidence session—

We will have to wait and see what the gateway review comes up with. For example, previous reviews have given us a steer towards streamlining the exemption process. That was a bit of advice that came to us straight out of a gateway review, which we were then able to implement along with our guidance. Such reviews are constructive and detailed in saying where we have challenges, what is going well and what we can work on. That enables us to take points away, which, as I said, we have done following previous reviews. We all look forward to seeing the results of the review, and we hope that the panel will have constructive input for us.

Are you asking about what costs business might add?

The deposit itself—the 20p—is paid and then the customer gets it back again, so it will be cost neutral. What businesses charge for their products is not a matter for the Scottish Government.

I am happy to share with the member whatever information we have on format switching.

That is not what I said at all.

The final date by which SEPA needs to receive completed registrations is 30 June 2023—registrations must be completed by that date.

I encourage all producers to start their registration before then, because the registration process is reasonably detailed. Producers have to enter all their products, the details of their barcodes and so on, and SEPA needs time to process the applications and publish the register of producers before the scheme goes live on 16 August. Retailers need to know which products they can continue to carry by 16 August. Therefore, SEPA needs to publish a list that shows all the producers that can continue to sell in Scotland, to ensure that retailers comply with the legislation.

SEPA has said that it will be very pragmatic in how it implements that, and I support that, because we want to ensure that businesses are on a pathway to compliance. I said that we are looking at how we can bring on board small producers who have not yet registered, and one thing that we are in discussions about in relation to that is working out what the pathway to compliance will look like for each business.

Each business is quite different and has different requirements and barriers, and we do not intend to be punitive or come after businesses—that is not the idea. The idea is to support businesses to comply with the scheme, because we want businesses to continue to be able to sell in Scotland, and we want them to understand their obligations under the scheme, and, in fact, to take advantage of it. Clearly, for businesses that are registered with the scheme and can continue to be stocked, that will be a competitive advantage.

The member has asked some really good questions. Circularity Scotland is a membership-based not-for-profit company. Its members include trade associations that are associated with small convenience stores, such as the Association of Convenience Stores, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents and the Scottish Grocers Federation—so they not only have a direct line to the information; they are also influencing Circularity Scotland’s decision making. The mechanism by which Circularity Scotland interacts with convenience stores is through their membership of those trade associations.

I meet those associations—and the Scottish Grocers Federation in particular—regularly and they have flagged up two categories of concern. First, they have emphasised that they want their members to participate in the scheme. They consider it a matter of footfall: where small grocers participate in the scheme, people will come through their doors, which is exactly what they want. They have asked me to help them to be involved in the scheme, and they are very supportive of it.

Secondly, some small businesses, particularly tiny ones, were concerned about their lack of storage space. Bakeries that sell bottled juice were also concerned, as you cannot have broken glass in a bakery. As the member pointed out, there are exemptions for such situations.

Let me give the high-level picture so that everybody understands. If you sell bottles and/or cans of juice, wine or anything else in Scotland, you have three options: you can choose to be a manual return point; you can choose to have an automated return point, which means installing a reverse vending machine; or, if it is applicable to you, you can choose to be exempt.

The grounds for exemption are proximity. For example, if several small stores are close together but a big store is nearby, the small stores might decide that they are not up for being return points and they can ask the big store to take their returns. Equally, they might decide that they want to work together to be a return point so they might pull together and get one reverse vending machine between them.

There are different models and it is up to each business to decide how it wants to proceed. If a business wants to be a return point, it can be a manual return point. That is the most cost-effective model if the business is collecting small amounts. That is probably what a convenience store would do. If a store has a small floor area, it might not have room for a reverse vending machine and it might not have high sale numbers of those products, so it would take them back as returns. In that case, customers would hand their bottles and cans over the counter.

The reverse vending machine infrastructure is probably most appropriate for bigger stores that not only have the space for them but the capital to do the up-front installations and the resource to do the administration of getting planning permission and all the things that go with that.

It is likely that big stores will have the reverse vending machines, small stores will have manual return points and other businesses that apply for an exemption—that is, small businesses or businesses with bakeries in them and so on—will be exempt.

On how we will know, we are the point at which it is with businesses to make their applications. Return point applications are open, so businesses can look at the evidence and decide what to do. Once the period of applications for return points is complete, we will have a picture of how many we have in Scotland and will know the mix—how many are manual and how many are RVMs. Then, knowing how much volume of material there is, we will be able to estimate how many will go to each point.

That will allow Biffa to work out its logistics. If there are more return points, that means fewer items per return point, whereas fewer return points means more items. Working out the logistics depends on exactly how many businesses sign up, where they are and what their volumes are, so it is an iterative process whereby we see what businesses have signed up.

I hope that I have answered the question. I might have drifted off a bit.

We already know that 95 per cent of materials, by volume, are signed up to the scheme. The way to counteract any risk is to bring all producers online so that they can continue to sell in Scotland. All the measures that we are using to support producers to sign up to the scheme, including cash-flow measures, labelling measures and any further measures that we agree with them, are meant to do exactly that—to allow that variety of producers to continue to sell in Scotland.

The labelling measure is of particular interest when it comes to the importation of wines. It was a specific ask from our wine importers, because you can imagine the difficulty if they were importing only 500 bottles of wine from a winery in France. They would not want to have to put a Scottish label on that number of bottles, which is quite reasonable. That is exactly the kind of situation for which the labelling measure was designed. Our estimate is that about 15,000 products will use the sticky label solution.

It is absolutely not the vision that our products will be restricted. We are working to continue to have a wide variety of products on the market.