Am I an importer or manufacturer under the ESPR?

What you must concretely do

The ESPR makes a sharp distinction between manufacturers and importers, and that distinction determines which obligations apply. Both roles are involved with the product passport, but the nature of the obligations differs. For a trading company that sources steel from Turkey, India or China and sells it in the EU, the question "what am I actually in this context" is therefore not cosmetic — it determines everything that follows.

A manufacturer is, according to Article 27 of the ESPR, the natural or legal person who manufactures a product, or has it designed or manufactured, and markets it under his own name or trademark. An importer is, according to Article 29, the natural or legal person who places a product from a country outside the EU on the EU market. Anyone combining both roles — for example having steel rolled at a factory outside the EU and selling it under their own trademark — should be careful not to determine the distinction too hastily on the basis of "who physically makes it", but on the basis of who markets it under which name. The latter touches on the question I sell steel under my own brand — what obligations do I get?, because a trading company that does not produce steel can also end up in the manufacturer role through the way it markets the product.

What is expected of you

As a manufacturer: ensure that the product complies with the requirements

Article 27 of the ESPR places responsibility for the content of the product passport with the manufacturer. This means that the manufacturer is accountable for the accuracy of the data contained in it: composition, origin, technical properties, and the rest of what the applicable delegated act for steel will require. For a steel producer with 10 to 100 employees, this concretely means that the data that already exists here and there in the company — in the quality certificate, the work order, the ERP system — must be brought together in a structured way, in a form that is machine-readable and can be linked to a QR code. This is less a legal task than a data quality task.

As an importer: check before you place on the market

Article 29 of the ESPR places a different type of obligation on the importer: not the compilation of the passport, but the checking whether the manufacturer outside the EU has already done so, and whether the passport meets the requirements, before the product enters the EU market. For a trading company that imports steel, this means that there must be a moment in the purchasing process when this is checked — not afterwards, when the product has already been resold. Anyone running into this problem because the supplier outside the EU does not themselves provide a passport will find more starting points at My manufacturer is outside the European Union — who arranges the product passport then?.

As an importer: keep and pass on the manufacturer's data

In addition to the checking task, Article 29 also places a storage obligation and a passing-on obligation on the importer: the data and documentation provided by the manufacturer must remain available for supervisory authorities and must be passed on in the supply chain. For a company of this size, this is often a matter of file management: per shipment, per production batch, recording what has been received and from whom.

Both roles: know when the role changes

A company that both processes steel itself and resells steel made by others can fall into a different role per product line. This is not a theoretical point: it determines whether the company acts as a manufacturer (Article 27) or as an importer (Article 29) for a particular batch, with different obligations per batch. Companies that are uncertain about their position in the chain, also in relation to intermediaries, will find more guidance at Who is responsible for the steel product passport?.

Where things go wrong in practice

A trading company that sources steel from a factory outside the EU and sells it under its own brand name sometimes assumes that it is "simply an importer", whereas marketing under its own brand actually entails characteristics of the manufacturer role. This creates uncertainty about who must provide which data.

A second situation: an importer receives a quality certificate from the manufacturer outside the EU, but no structured product passport, and incorrectly assumes that the certificate is sufficient. The control task under Article 29 requires something different from checking a quality certificate.

A third situation: a company purchases semi-finished products from a European distributor, which in turn sources from outside the EU, and assumes that the obligations already rest with that distributor. Who exactly has which role in the chain depends on who puts the product on the EU market where and under what name — not on who purchases it first. This question also relates to the position of the distributor itself, see What obligations does a steel distributor or trader have?.

A fourth situation: a company sells via its own webshop or via a marketplace to other EU countries, and does not consider itself an "importer" because the product was already stored in the EU. Cross-border sales within the EU usually do not involve the importer role in the same way as imports from outside the EU, but the question of what role a sales channel entails does recur here — see also What does the product passport mean if I sell steel via an online marketplace?.

A fifth situation: internally, the question "are we a manufacturer or importer" is treated as a one-time legal qualification, whereas a company with a varied procurement pattern should actually ask this question again for each product line or per supplier.

What you can document

• An overview per product line or supplier of the role that the company has in it: manufacturer under Article 27, or importer under Article 29 of the ESPR.
• A fixed control moment in the procurement process to establish whether a supplier outside the EU has already provided a product passport, and whether it is complete.
• A file per shipment or batch with the documentation received from the manufacturer outside the EU, including date of receipt and contact details of the manufacturer.
• Internal arrangements on who within the company is responsible for assessing the role with new suppliers or new sales structures (own brand, marketplace, resale).
• A fixed format for recording data supplied by the manufacturer, so that this data can also be used for compiling the passport itself.

Companies wondering whether to handle this internally or whether it can be better outsourced will find a starting point at Do I need additional staff for the product passport or can I outsource it?.