A very small business with branded packaging that only sells in its own country

The situation

A business with fewer than ten people puts its own logo on its packaging, buys that packaging from a supplier in the same country, and sells only to customers at home.

What appears to apply

• Packaging that carries a business's own name or logo

  Applies now

  If a business has packaging made carrying its own name or logo, the rules treat that business as the packaging's manufacturer. That is the word the rules use, and it applies even when someone else's brand also appears on the box. Printed tape, a branded mailer or a bag with a logo are enough. Buying plain unbranded boxes is not.

  Source: Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Art. 3(1), point (13) — read from this source on 13 August 2026

  There is an exception for very small businesses, described separately. Which supplier it accepts depends on what is being decided. The definition itself needs a supplier in the same country. The manufacturer's own duties around checking, records and marking accept one anywhere in the EU.

• The exception for very small businesses

  Applies now

  There is one way out of counting as the manufacturer of packaging carrying a business's own brand. Two things both have to be true: the business is a micro-enterprise, which the rules define by staff numbers and money, and the company supplying the packaging is based in the same country. When both hold, the supplier counts as the manufacturer instead.

  Source: Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Art. 3(1), point (13)(b) — read from this source on 13 August 2026

  For the definition above, the supplier has to be in the same country. Two other provisions make the same swap for a narrower purpose, and those accept a supplier anywhere in the EU. They cover the manufacturer's own duties: checking the packaging, keeping the technical file, and marking it. So a micro-enterprise buying from another EU country can still carry the definition while those particular duties sit with its supplier. This exception only changes who counts as the manufacturer. It says nothing about the separate producer role a business picks up by selling into another country.

• When a business counts as a producer, and in which country

  Applies now

  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 13 August 2026

  The two about another country decide whether a representative is needed there, and both turn on selling directly to end users — sending a pallet to a wholesaler abroad is not the same thing. The fifth, about unpacking, is the one most often missed.