Which rule bites first?

GPSR, because it applies to every consumer product with no threshold at all, and because marketplaces enforce it themselves by suspending listings. The others have thresholds or deadlines you may still be under.

Do I need an EU Responsible Person?

Yes, if the manufacturer is outside the EU. No consumer product may be placed on the EU market unless an economic operator established in the Union is responsible for it, and their name and address must be visible to the buyer.

What has to be on the product or the packaging?

The name and contact address of both the manufacturer and the Responsible Person, plus something that identifies the specific product; a type, batch or serial number. Warnings and safety information must be in the language of every country you sell into.

How long do I have to keep the technical file?

Ten years from the day the product is placed on the EU market, and you must be able to hand it to an authority on request. As an importer you keep your own copy; pointing at the manufacturer is not enough.

Do I have to register under REACH?

You must register if you import one tonne or more per year of a given substance, whether on its own, in a mixture, or intended to be released from an article. Below one tonne there is no registration duty, but other obligations still apply.

Is the one-tonne threshold per shipment or per year?

Per legal entity, per substance, per calendar year. Not per shipment, not per product line, and not per warehouse.

What is an Only Representative, and do I need one?

An Only Representative is an EU-based entity appointed by a non-EU manufacturer to carry the registration duties that would otherwise fall on every one of their EU importers. If your supplier appoints one, your own registration duty disappears; you become a downstream user.

Why was my Amazon listing suspended?

Most likely because the listing has no valid EU Responsible Person recorded against it. Amazon, Kaufland and other marketplaces have been enforcing this since 2025 and suspend listings that lack it, regardless of whether the product itself is safe.

I dropship from outside the EU. Does any of this apply to me?

Yes. The duties follow whoever places the product on the EU market, and that is the seller of record; even if you never see, touch or store the goods. Shipping direct from a supplier abroad does not move the obligation to that supplier.

What does an EU Responsible Person cost?

Published prices run from roughly €200 to €800 per year. Most services price per company or per catalogue rather than per product; a basic small-catalogue arrangement sits at the bottom of that range, and toys, electrical goods or large catalogues sit at the top.

Can a UK company be the Responsible Person for EU sales?

Not from a UK address. The Responsible Person must be established in the Union , and the United Kingdom has not been part of it since 2021, so a UK establishment and a UK address do not qualify. What decides it is the place of establishment, not the nationality of the owner: a UK group with a subsidiary or branch established in a member state can name that EU entity, and it is that EU address that must appear on the product.

What happens if I ignore this?

The GPSR itself sets no fine amounts; Article 44 makes every member state set penalties that are “effective, proportionate and dissuasive”, and they differ widely. Germany’s amended Product Safety Act (draft, expected 2026) tops out at €100,000 for serious offences; the Netherlands runs one of the strictest regimes, with fine categories reaching around €900,000 at the indexed top level. Before any fine comes the measure that hurts sooner: the listing suspension.

The authorities found a problem; how fast must I act?

Two working days. When a market surveillance authority asks an economic operator to act on a safety issue, the operator must respond within two working days; and recalls and corrective measures run through the Safety Gate alert system that every member state reads.

Is anything exempt from the GPSR?

Yes: a fixed list: medicinal products for human or veterinary use, food and feed, living plants and animals (and GMOs in contained use), animal by-products, plant protection products, transport equipment used in the context of a transport service provided to consumers and not operated by the consumers themselves , low-risk aircraft, antiques, and products clearly marked to be repaired or reconditioned prior to use. Read the transport line carefully: a ride or attraction that consumers operate themselves is not exempt.

Where do I have to register for EPR?

In every member state where you sell, separately. There is no EU-wide EPR register; each country runs its own national producer register, with its own categories, its own fees and its own registration number.

Who counts as the producer if I only import?

Under every European EPR regime the producer is not the company that made the product; it is the company that first places it on that national market. If you import and sell, that is you.

Can one product trigger more than one EPR scheme?

Yes, and routinely four at once in the same country: packaging, electrical equipment, batteries and paper. Each has its own register, its own number and its own report.

What changes for packaging in August 2026?

From 12 August 2026 the EU Packaging Regulation requires a seller who supplies end users in a member state directly to appoint an authorised representative for packaging in that state. Article 3(1), point (15)(c) and (d) covers a seller established in a member state or in a third country alike, so shipping straight to consumers from outside the EU is caught. Sell to a distributor established in that country instead and he is the producer there; for other third-country producers each member state decides whether to require a representative.

Does CBAM apply to what I import?

Only to a defined list of goods: iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity. If your goods are not on that list, CBAM does not touch you; no report, no certificates, nothing.

Do I need to be an authorised CBAM declarant?

Yes once you expect to pass 50 tonnes of net mass per calendar year, counted over iron and steel, aluminium, cement and fertilisers together; and the authorisation must be applied for before you cross that threshold, not after. Hydrogen and electricity do not count towards the 50 tonnes and have no threshold of their own: for those you are in scope from the first consignment, however small.

When do I actually pay for CBAM?

Later than most people expect. Certificates for 2026 imports can only be bought from February 2027, and the annual declaration for 2026 is due by 30 September 2027.

Selling black mass; the battery recycling market answered

The black mass market

What is black mass, and why does it trade? intermediate

The intermediate product of battery recycling: end-of-life lithium batteries and production scrap are discharged, dismantled and shredded; the fine fraction that falls out is black mass, and it carries the lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. Mechanical recyclers sell it because the next step; dissolving the metals out; is a chemical plant, not a shredder.

Why the material trades rather than disappears:

A mechanical recycler's core competence is logistics, permits and shredding; recovering the metals hydrometallurgically is a different factory with different economics.
European hydrometallurgical capacity is still being built, while battery scrap volumes grow faster than anyone's forecast of two years ago.
Hence a real market: shredder output sold under spec sheets, with metal content as the currency; a market young enough that standards are still settling.

The Battery Regulation's own arithmetic drives the same conclusion: recovery targets that rise into the 2030s mean the metals have to come out somewhere; a tonne that stays powder is a target missed.

Common mistake: calling black mass a product because it has buyers. In law it is waste until it meets an end-of-waste state; the buyer list, the paperwork and the permits all follow from that word.

Source: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 (recycling and recovery duties); market structure as observed by the desk behind this guide. Checked: 24 September 2026.

How can black mass be shipped since November 2026? hazardous

As hazardous waste with its own entry: from 9 November 2026 the amended European List of Waste gives the intermediate fraction its own code (19 14 02), which means no export for recovery outside the OECD at all, and prior written notification and consent for movements within the OECD. The practical effect is a redirection of volume toward European processing, not just a paperwork change.

What that means for a seller:

Buyers outside the OECD that used to take the material are off the table for recovery; the eligible buyer pool is now European and OECD-wide.
Movements run through the notification procedure: contracts, financial guarantee, competent-authority consent before anything moves; on the mechanics see the waste shipments page.
Member states may apply the amended list earlier than the European date; the date that governs your site is the national one.
Hazardous status changes more than borders: storage, packaging, transport and permit conditions along the whole chain tighten accordingly.

Common mistake: planning a shipment "before the deadline". The competent authorities have seen that plan before; the guarantee and consent take longer than the window, and a cargo that misses it is not grandfathered.

Source: Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2025/934 amending the European List of Waste, entry 19 14 02, applicable 9 November 2026; Regulation (EU) 2024/1157. Checked: 24 September 2026.

Who buys it? shrinking map

Hydrometallurgical processors; mostly projects and plants inside Europe, plus refiners elsewhere in the OECD; connected to battery makers and car groups through long agreements, and to independent shredders through traders and brokers. Since the export restriction, the list of eligible buyers is materially shorter and more European.

The buyer landscape in practice:

Integrated projects; plants built next to, or contracted by, cell makers and automotive groups to close their own loop.
Merchant hydromet; standalone processors buying on spec from whoever has tonnes; the natural first buyer for an independent recycler.
Traders and brokers; bridging volume between small shredders and large processors, and carrying the documentation discipline that small sellers usually lack.
Non-OECD refiners; previously the default outlet for much of the volume; for recovery out of the EU that door closed with the November 2026 classification.

For a new seller the realistic sequence is the same as everywhere in this guide: a trader or broker first, direct plant contracts as volumes and consistency grow (the offtake page for the mechanics).

Common mistake: anchoring on the highest bidder from the pre-2026 world. Some of those desks no longer exist for this material; a sale that cannot legally ship is not a sale.

Source: Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2025/934; market structure as observed by the desk behind this guide. Checked: 24 September 2026.

How is it priced? payables

On payable metals: the nickel and cobalt content against exchange quotations, with lithium payability increasingly written in as its market develops, and everything else (moisture, contaminants, packaging, documentation quality) arriving as deductions and treatment charges. Two cargoes of the same tonnes can differ enormously in value.

How the number is built:

Analysis is the invoice. The load's metal analysis, drawn and umpired properly, decides what is payable; sampling disputes are price disputes (see the specs question).
Metal benchmarks. Payables track nickel and cobalt quotations; lithium has gone from ignored to negotiated as its value and the regulation's recovery targets rose.
Deductions and charges. Moisture, tramp metals, graphite treatment, packaging and transport arrive as negative lines; a clean, well-documented cargo prices visibly better than the same powder in sloppy condition.

Contracts therefore fix formula, sampling authority and umpire analysis before anything else; the framework questions are the standard offtake ones.

Common mistake: negotiating a flat price per tonne. In a payables market a flat price is always a transfer of information from the less-informed party to the other one.

Source: market pricing practice as observed by the desk behind this guide, September 2026. Checked: 24 September 2026.

What specs matter? chemistry

The chemistry first: nickel, cobalt, lithium, manganese content by chemistry family (NMC, LFP and their kin), then the contaminants that cost the buyer; copper, aluminium and iron from incomplete separation, moisture, and anything that complicates the leaching step. LFP black mass trades too; differently, because its payables story is lithium and its logistics costs are the same.

The spec sheet in plain words:

Payable metals; stated per chemistry, with the analysis method named, because two methods can read one cargo differently.
Tramp elements; copper, aluminium, iron from foils and casings; buyers tolerate them as percentages and charge beyond.
Moisture and physical form; weight you are not paid for, plus handling consequences.
Documentation; the waste's origin, the battery families in the feed, and the chain that proves it; on the certified-feedstock equivalent, see the certification page's logic; the principle is identical even though the scheme differs.

Common mistake: blending everything into one silo and calling it flexibility. Blended feed with unknown chemistry is harder to sell at any price; sorted, documented feed is what payables are made of.

Source: market practice of the desk behind this guide; standard hydrometallurgical feed constraints. Checked: 24 September 2026.

What does the Battery Regulation demand? targets

Rising recovery and recycling duties that pull your output into the value chain by law: recycling efficiency for lithium-based batteries steps up from 65% (by the end of 2025) to 70% (by the end of 2030); lithium recovery has to reach 50% by 2027 and 80% by 2031; and from August 2031 new batteries must contain minimum shares of recycled cobalt, lithium and nickel. Every target creates a buyer for what recyclers produce.

What the dates do to the market:

Recycling efficiency (the share of battery mass actually recycled) binds plants, not shipments; it is why processes and their buyers get audited against material flows.
Lithium recovery; the metal that used to be written off now has to come back; this is the single biggest driver of lithium payability in black mass contracts.
Recycled content; from August 2031 industrial and EV batteries must include minimum recycled shares (16% cobalt, 6% lithium, 6% nickel to start); cell makers therefore contract today for tomorrow's recovered metals.
Producer responsibility; collection and treatment duties sit with producers, which is why OEM-linked offtake is a structural feature of this market, not a fashion.

A recycler reading this should see demand policy: the regulation is a purchase order with a timetable.

Common mistake: treating the 2031 dates as far away. Offtake for recycled content is being negotiated now, and the plants being financed now assume it; the buyer you will want in 2031 is signing someone else's tonnes today.

Source: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 (Batteries Regulation), Articles 8 and 57 and Annex XII. Checked: 24 September 2026.

How does a recycler start selling? sequence

Permits and documentation first, chemistry discipline second, buyers third: a waste treatment permit for what you actually do, a documented feed and output chain, honest analysis of your own material, and then; before volume, not after; the buyer conversations that match your tonnes to a plant's appetite.

The order that works:

Permits. Storage and treatment of hazardous battery waste needs environmental authorisation; what applies is national and site-specific, and it gates everything else.
Feed control. Collection contracts and intake documentation; buyers will diligence where your batteries came from, not only what is in the powder.
Know your own analysis. Per-lot chemistry from a competent laboratory, before a buyer's lab tells you.
Find the buyer that fits your tonnes. Traders and brokers for small and irregular volumes, merchant hydromet for consistency, OEM-linked projects when your scale and documentation justify it.
Contract the payables framework; formula, sampling, umpire, charges (offtake page) before the first truck.

Common mistake: selling from the shredder's phone without the waste paperwork in place. The best price in this market is unavailable to a seller who cannot document origin; it is not a discount, it is exclusion.

Source: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542; Regulation (EU) 2024/1157; desk practice. Checked: 24 September 2026.

Selling black mass, answered