Glossary
Distributor
Also called: packaging distributor
What it means in practice
Most shops are distributors. It matters more than it sounds, because a distributor can become the producer in a country it ships to, which is how a business that never manufactures anything still ends up on a register.
The rules that give it meaning
Producer is the word the rules use for whoever first puts packaging onto a country's market. It is worked out country by country, so one business can be a producer in several countries at once. There are five ways to become one, and the first four split by what is being made available rather than only by where. Two cover a business in its own country. One is for packaging on its own: the outer boxes and wrapping goods travel in, the cups and bags filled at a counter, the packaging used in farming and fishing. The other is for goods inside any other packaging. Two more cover the same pair sent to another EU country, but only where the goods go directly to the people who will use them. The fifth catches a business that unpacks goods without being the one who uses them, unless somebody earlier in the chain already counts as the producer.
Source: Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Art. 3(1), point (15) — read from this source on