You may have noticed that at checkout, we no longer offer shipping to European Union countries. This wasn’t an easy decision, and we owe you an honest explanation.
The short answer is a new regulation called the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR). It came into effect recently, and while its goals are genuinely good, reducing packaging waste, making all packaging recyclable by 2030, and holding producers accountable, the way it applies to small businesses outside the EU has become an impossible hurdle for a company our size.
The PPWR introduces a sweeping set of rules for anyone who places packaged goods on the EU market. This includes online retailers shipping from countries like Australia. Under the regulation, we would be required to register with multiple EU member states, report detailed data about every piece of packaging we use, and potentially contribute to costly waste management schemes. The administrative burden is significant, and the fees can scale unpredictably.
For a multinational distributor, these requirements are manageable. For a small, independent Australian business with a handful of staff, they are not. The compliance cost alone would force us to dramatically raise our prices for EU customers (not reasonable price to cover the annual compliance payments to each applicable country which can range from 5-10k+) , and the legal risk of getting something wrong is simply too high.
You can read the full details of the regulation on the European Commission’s official page here.
This is the part that stings. Since we opened, we’ve been all our "new ordered" packaging are either recyclable materials or part manufactured using recycled maetrials. Our boxes, our tape, the satchels we use for small parts, they’re already chosen with sustainability in mind.
We haven’t given up entirely. We’re still hoping that the EU will eventually introduce an exemption for micro and small businesses outside its borders, a simple, low-cost mechanism that recognises when a company is already using sustainable packaging and just wants to send a few boxes to a hobbyist or a workshop. At the moment, that’s only a hope. Nothing has been announced, and we can’t base our business decisions on a possibility.
What This Means for You
If you’re an existing customer in the EU, we’re deeply sorry. We’ve loved being part of your projects, and this decision genuinely hurts. You can still browse our store and reach out with questions, and we’ll do everything we can to help you find a local reseller or an alternative solution.
For everyone else, it’s business as usual. We ship to Australia, New Zealand, Asia, North America, United Kingdom and everywhere else that will have us.
Small businesses like ours run on relationships, not just transactions. We hope you understand that this wasn’t a choice we wanted to make, and we’ll keep pushing for a way back in. In the meantime, take care of your printers, and thank you for being part of what we do.
