Roles
What a non-EU exporter must supply to an EU importer
Your EU importer carries the legal duty. It cannot sell your product until you supply the documents, the marks and the product data.
You must supply the documents, the physical marks and the product data that your European Union (EU) importer needs. The duty falls on your importer, the operator that places your product on the EU market. It cannot produce any of that package for you.
Warning: the battery passport is the first binding passport duty in EU law. It applies from 18 February 2027. No passport duty under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) reaches any product group yet. Read how to read the timeline before you accept a date.
If you skip one item, your importer must not place the battery on the EU market. Your stock then stays in a warehouse in Europe, and you pay for the delay.
The operator that places the product on the EU market carries the duty
New Zealand is outside the European Union. If you have no EU establishment, you do not place a battery on the EU market. Your Dutch or German buyer does that, and your Dutch or German buyer carries the duty. The battery regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, defines both terms in Article 3(1), and who is the economic operator quotes them.
That answer decides who a market surveillance authority can penalise. It does not decrease your work, and the rest of this page is your work. See importer obligations and market surveillance and customs.
Your importer must verify a fixed list, and only you can produce it
Article 41(2) of the battery regulation states what the importer must verify before it places a battery on the market:
(a) the EU declaration of conformity and technical documentation referred to in Annex VIII have been drawn up and that the relevant conformity assessment procedure referred to in Article 17 has been carried out by the manufacturer; (b) the battery bears the CE marking referred to in Article 19, and is marked and labelled in accordance with Article 13
That paragraph is a description of your work. Take an e-bike battery built in Christchurch and sold by an importer in Rotterdam. The importer did not design or build the battery, so it cannot draw up the technical documentation.
| Item | Where it is written | Who produces it |
|---|---|---|
| EU declaration of conformity | Article 41(2)(a) | You |
| Technical documentation | Article 41(2)(a), with Annex VIII | You |
| Conformity assessment | Article 41(2)(a), with Article 17 | You. The text names the manufacturer |
| CE marking | Article 41(2)(b), with Article 19 | You, on the product |
| Marking and labelling | Article 41(2)(b), with Article 13 | You, on the product |
Hand that table to the colleague who owns your product files.
Two rows are physical. The CE marking and the Article 13 marking go on the battery itself, so they change your production line and your artwork.
The passport is data, and there is one passport for each battery
Article 77(1) of the battery regulation names three categories:
| Category | Size threshold |
|---|---|
| Light means of transport (LMT) battery | None |
| Industrial battery | Capacity greater than 2 kilowatt hours |
| Electric vehicle battery | None |
Warning: the light means of transport category carries no size threshold. A small e-bike battery is covered. Do not decide your position from the loose phrase "large batteries". The Commission web page on digital product passports writes "certain types of batteries, including", and that list is open. See batteries for the scope in full.
The duty is per battery, not per model and not per batch. Three parts of the same article confirm it.
| What the text requires | Where it is written |
|---|---|
| A unique identifier for each battery | Article 77(3) |
| A new passport for a repurposed battery | Article 77(7) |
| The passport ends after the battery is recycled | Article 77(8) |
So the data you send must describe each item. See what is a product identifier for the scheme choice.
The operator that places the battery on the market must keep the passport accurate, complete and up to date. That operator will ask you for new data after every product change.
Sort the data before you send it. Article 77(2) gives three groups of readers three different sets, and each set points to Annex XIII. The sets are not nested, and two of them overlap. The detailed composition sits in the restricted set, for a person with a legitimate interest. Keep it off the public page, and read who can see what first.
This is a systems problem. The number of records grows with the number of batteries you ship. OwlQR, a New Zealand company that publishes this site, builds this type of system. Ask any supplier to show you the three groups of readers in a working record before you buy.
Your importer will ask for more than the conformity documents
Two further battery duties produce data that goes into the passport.
| What you supply | Where it is written | Status |
|---|---|---|
| A carbon footprint declaration | Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, Article 7(1) | The regulation is in force. The duty is phased by battery type |
| Responsible sourcing information, taken from the due diligence report | Annex XIII point 1(d), which refers to Article 52(3) | The due diligence duties apply from 18 August 2027 |
Ask your importer which phase reaches your battery, and ask early. A carbon footprint figure needs data from your own suppliers, so you cannot produce it alone.
Nothing under ESPR reaches your product yet
ESPR is Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. It entered into force on 18 July 2024. It is a framework regulation, and it creates no passport duty on its own. Article 9 makes a passport a condition of market access, but only for a product group that a delegated act covers. The European Commission has adopted no such act for any group, as at 14 August 2026. See which products need a passport, and when.
Article 13(4) of ESPR puts the registry upload on the same operator, the one that places the product on the market. The EU registry became operational in July 2026. No operator must upload to it yet, because no delegated act applies.
The registry implementing act supports the same point. That act is Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778. Recital 7 states that the use of the registry "should not circumvent or undermine" other Union law on the place of establishment. So an account in the registry does not move the duty off your importer. See the EU passport registry.
So a merino jumper sold to a buyer in Hamburg needs no passport today. ESPR excludes food and feed, so a food or a drink product stays outside ESPR scope. See food and feed are excluded. The packaging around the food is a separate product, and the exclusion does not cover it. See packaging.
Do not buy an identifier scheme because a supplier names one
ESPR names the ISO/IEC 15459 series in Annex III. A search of the full regulation returns no hit for GS1, for Digital Link, for IEC 61406 or for the Digital Object Identifier. Article 10(1)(c) makes the ISO/IEC 15459 rule an interim one, and it holds until the references of harmonised standards are published.
Some vendor pages state that a passport QR code must carry a GS1 Digital Link address. The primary text does not say that. Ask your importer which scheme it will use, and put the answer in the contract. See identifier schemes: what is verified.
A consortium paper reads your duty more widely than the text does
A white paper from EU-funded projects, dated 31 March 2026, keeps a non-EU manufacturer as a duty holder whatever its establishment. That paper is not legal text, and it binds nobody. Who is the economic operator sets out what it says beside what the battery regulation says.
Plan as though both readings could apply. The two readings ask you for the same package. The difference shows up in the contract, because a European customer may write the wider reading into it. See agreeing data duties with your EU importer.
Send the package before the first shipment, not on request
- Name the company that places your product on the EU market.
- Draw up the EU declaration of conformity and the technical documentation.
- Complete the conformity assessment. The regulation gives that job to you.
- Apply the CE marking and the required marking and labelling to the product.
- Give each individual battery a unique identifier.
- Tag every data field with the group of readers that may see it.
- Send the package before the first shipment. Do not wait for a request.
- Name one person on each side who updates the data after a change.
If you supply a component or a material, no ESPR passport duty falls on you. A customer data request will still reach you, as a condition of purchase. See component and material suppliers.