Country Of Origin Now Required For Amazon Products

This announcement is for the UK, and we are not sure yet if the US marketplace and other marketplaces will soon follow. My guess is this might be specific to the UK right now as Amazon has pushed back on the COOL bill (Country Of Origin Labeling) in the past, which would mandate prominent disclosure of where a product is produced for all online retailers.

The new Country Of Original requirement seems to be more of a response to BREXIT. In the wake of the BREXIT fiasco since the UK exited the EU in January 2020, which has led to complex trade issues along the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland open border, Amazon has responded by introducing a new County of Origin (COO) regulation for Amazon Sellers.

This regulation update takes advantage of a largely unknown geographical and legal loophole, whereby Great Britain (GB) only constitutes England, Scotland, and Wales, whereas the United Kingdom (UK) also comprises Northern Ireland. However, while the root cause of the amendment stems from the debacle on the Irish border, Amazon has not openly admitted this to be the cause of the update. As such, the new rule acts as a blanket policy to all product listings regardless of where they are sold.

From 22 August onward, Amazon Sellers will need to give the appropriate COO data for every listing in their shop. Amazon states that the new regulation aims to improve the quality of product listings and ensure that FBA Export orders transiting the UK-EU, which now includes the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland border, are not held up by customs or face other taxation issues, which it says will hopefully smoothen out deliveries and improve customer satisfaction. But, of course, the new rule does come at one significant expense. Namely, the time Sellers will need to spend going through every listing in their shops to add Country Of Origin info. Those with extensive inventories could find themselves spending countless hours sifting through several thousand listings to make sure they are all compliant.

You might be asking, “What changes will the new requirement bring?” The update will have two direct impacts on listings and the Add a Product tool.

First, Sellers must provide COO information for all new listings, or else the system will not allow the listing to be created. In order to choose the COO, there is a drop-down menu that provides a list of countries to select. Second, Sellers cannot make any edits to existing listings until COO information has been provided.

What constitutes the COO may not always be clear when products are manufactured in different nations at different parts of the production process. According to the Rules of Origin outlined by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Article 27, “Goods whose production involved more than one country shall be deemed to originate in the country where they underwent their last, substantial, economically justified processing or working in an undertaking equipped for that purpose and resulting in the manufacture of a new product or representing an important stage of manufacture.”

In any case, when you are unsure of what data to provide for the COO, you can find further information at Amazon’s Providing Country of Origin help page.