This week I’ve been speaking to a seller who has somewhere in the region of 150,000 offers on Amazon and thus far wasn’t aware of GPSR (General Product Safety Regulation), which comes into effect on the 13th of December 2024. With 150,000 products, there’s a lot of paperwork to get through and you’ll want to have your GPSR compliance completed in the first half of the year, well before Q4 is upon us.
I’m writing this on the day that the DUP have agreed deal with the British government to restore power-sharing at Stormont. It transpires that the DUP are perfectly correct in that Brexit deals have put a border between the UK and Northern Ireland, so much so that UK sellers will now be impacted by EU policy.
The Northern Ireland Protocol came into force in January 2021 and was modified by the Windsor Framework in April 2023 which was supposed to create a ‘Green Lane’ for goods remaining in NI with few checks or additional paperwork with a ‘Red Lane’ for goods moving on to the EU. One might suppose that a Northern Ireland consumer purchasing a product from Great Britain would be a case for using the Green Lane, but the GPSR doesn’t treat goods in that way.
GPSR compliance check
- Am I impacted? Yes, if you sell non-food products in the EU and Northern Ireland.
- Consequences of non-compliance: Listing deactivation, if Amazon become aware of non-compliance with any of the requirements
GPSR will not apply in Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales). It will, however, apply to sales in Northern Ireland, under the Northern Ireland Protocol. This means that all sellers on Amazon UK will be impacted as there’s a pretty high chance that you may get a sale from Northern Ireland. If you want to sell on Amazon.co.uk you need to comply with this EU dictat.
GPSR compliance requirements
We’ve previously published a list of the main GPSR requirements you need to fulfil in order to sell to consumers in Northern Ireland, but the two that will impact you the most are to:
- Have a Responsible Person based in the EU for relevant products (mainly non-food products) and Display the Responsible Person’s name and contact details, including the postal and electronic address, in online listings
- Display the manufacturer’s name and contact details, including the postal and electronic address, in online listings and upload images of your product safety information
It’s the second of these that will take time, even if the product is CE marked and you have the manufacturer’s details, you’ll need to declare their details and upload the product safety information for every one of your offers on Amazon.
And, while it would be prudent to start preparing this information, Amazon say that there will be a widget to provide your manufacturer’s name and contact details for each product, and the Responsible Person information for non-CE-marked products but it’s not yet available.
Our best advice would be to start assessing your stock profile and scope out the work that you’ll need to do so that you have a plan… especially if you have 150,000 thousand products to get through!
There is a ton more detail on what you need to do on the Amazon GPSR help page.
4 Responses
In case you are looking for a EU Responsible Person service provider, look here: euresponsibleperson.com
Perhaps it will be controversial, but there is another option: Don’t sell to Northern Ireland.
There is talk on the Amazon seller platforms of UK sellers doing just that, and stopping selling to buyers over there when the time comes. It is supposed to be possible to deselect them from shipping options, though I’ve not checked for myself and Amazon clearly wants everyone to become EU GPSR compliant, so maybe they won’t even allow that to happen.
For some smaller businesses, this option will make sense if it is possible to do it. The profit vs cost/hassle ratio is not good enough. But what of those poor buyers in N.Ireland? Are they even aware of this possibility? I think they won’t believe it until it actually happens, and is too late. They’ll still be able to buy Lego and Ikea and the like, but those niche things that the small businesses did will no longer be available to them, at least not via Amazon.
It is possible to remove Northern Ireland from any Shipping Templates if you are on the professional selling plan. However…
– You can’t as it stands cease FBA orders
– It is also reliant on amazon actually programming their GPSR rules to look up if a sellers shipping templates don’t include Northern Ireland rather than just assuming all ASINS need to have a responsible person etc. Currently, I wouldn’t trust they could program a ball to roll downhill
It is possible to untick Northern Ireland as a shipping destination having just checked. As you say it is a plausible scenario to consider