The situation
A plan to start selling to consumers in three new countries
A Polish pet-food brand selling online has signed with a fulfilment provider that will ship to consumers in Germany, France and Spain from January. Every parcel carries the product packaging and a shipping box. The fulfilment provider wants the brand’s packaging registration numbers for all three countries before it ships anything.
The operations lead has to find out what each country requires of the brand as a packaging producer: which register, which compliance scheme, what data to report and what must appear on the packaging. The rules overlap and differ, and an EU regulation is replacing parts of them in stages.
What the research has to settle
The rules behind the answer
- The first seller in is often the producer
- Packaging EPR rules generally make the business that first makes packaged goods available in the country responsible for that packaging, including the shipping box. A foreign brand selling direct to consumers is often that business.
- Germany: register before you sell
- German packaging law requires producers to register in the central packaging register before placing packaging on the market, and to join a compliance scheme for packaging that ends up with consumers. Marketplaces and fulfilment providers must check that the registration exists.
- France and Spain: registration, schemes and labels
- French law requires membership of an approved scheme, gives producers a unique identification number and requires sorting information for consumers. Spanish law requires registration in the producer register and participation in a collective or individual scheme.
- The EU regulation is phasing in
- The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation replaces parts of the national rules in stages, including rules for producers selling into a country where they are not established. The research confirms which provisions apply on the date sales start.
How it runs in azta
From the question to the document
The question, as you would type it
Polish pet-food brand starting direct-to-consumer sales into Germany, France and Spain through a fulfilment provider. What packaging EPR registrations, scheme memberships, reporting and labelling duties apply in each country, and do we need a local authorised representative?
You start with
A plan to start selling to consumers in three new countries
- 01
Describe the sales plan
Give the countries, the channel, the fulfilment set-up and the packaging used. azta searches the German, French and Spanish packaging laws and the EU regulation.
Cited research· Free - 02
Read each country’s duties
Open the registration and labelling provisions in the reader, in the original language, with their in-force status.
Atlas statute reader - 03
Draft the registration plan
Ask for a plan per country: what to do, in which order, who owns it and what data it needs. Edit it in Canvas.
Canvas · Ask azta· Pro - 04
Share it with the fulfilment provider
Export the plan to Word for the team and the fulfilment provider. The cited research stays with your file.
Word export· Pro You send
A registration plan listing each country’s packaging duties, owners and order
What you get
A registration plan listing each country’s packaging duties, owners and order
Registration plan · draft
Packaging EPR: Germany, France, Spain
Germany, first. Register the brand in the central packaging register and contract with a compliance scheme for sales and shipping packaging before the first parcel ships. Give the registration number to the fulfilment provider.
France. Join an approved scheme for household packaging and obtain the unique identification number. Check that the product packaging carries the required sorting information before stock for French customers is shipped.
Spain. Register as a packaging producer in the national register and join a scheme for household packaging. Reporting of packaging weights follows in each country, so the packaging data per product must be kept from day one.
Outcomes on your numbers
What azta is worth on this task
Pro pays for itself after
21 minutes a month
At €80 an hour, that is all the time Pro (€27 a month) has to take off your desk to cover its price.
Example figures. Replace them with your own.
- Hours back a year
- 22
- Capacity at your rate
- €1,728
- More market-entry packaging plans a quarter
- 0.8
- Return on Pro
- 5.3×
- Research
- Drafting
- Your review
A scenario you set, not a promise. The hours that come back go to another client, or deeper into this one.
Want these numbers on your team’s real workload?
Book a demoSources azta searches here
- Gesetze im Internet
- Légifrance
- BOE
- EUR-Lex · Curia
What stays with you
- Packaging weights and materials per product.
- Choosing and contracting compliance schemes.
- The registrations themselves, which azta does not file.
Frequently asked questions
- Does azta hold the registers’ guidance?
- It holds national legislation and EU law. Register and scheme guidance is not held for every country, and azta says what it cites.
- Does this cover plastic packaging taxes?
- No. Plastic packaging taxes are a separate regime. Ask about them separately.
- Can we keep one plan for every new country?
- On Enterprise, a shared workspace keeps the plans and research for each country together, so the next market starts from the same file.
