Online sellers urged to prepare for sea border change

Online shopping platforms are urging sellers to be ready for changes to the Irish Sea border which will start later this month.

The development mainly impacts sellers in Great Britain who have customers in Northern Ireland.

The change, driven by an update in EU product safety rules, means sellers in Great Britain face new rules when selling to Northern Ireland.

Some small retailers have already said they will stop or pause deliveries to Northern Ireland as a result.

Northern Ireland effectively remained in the EU’s single market for goods after Brexit.

The means the EU’s new General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) will apply in Northern Ireland from 13 December.

A spokesperson for eBay said: "We are supporting sellers as much as we can to understand and comply with this complex regulation.

"For several months we have had GPSR fields and functionalities live to allow sellers to add required information to their listings, we have been communicating with them since June, engaged with them through forums such as eBay Open and our seller council, and are providing sellers with partners to help them get compliant.”

An Amazon spokesperson said: "We have made sellers aware of the EU GPSR and the relevant requirements ahead of it being introduced.

“Sellers are required to submit the required information for listing on our EU-based stores and we will continue to provide updates to sellers with listings on our UK store.”

Among the requirements of GPSR is the need for a "responsible person", which is effectively a compliance officer or agent.

For goods which are manufactured outside the EU or Northern Ireland the responsible person must be based in the EU or Northern Ireland.

That is a particular difficulty for businesses in Great Britain which are selling direct to consumers via an online platform and do not have a NI-based distributor or wholesaler.

Specialist companies are offering outsourced responsible person services but these may be too expensive for some small businesses.

Sellers based in Northern Ireland do not face any changes when selling to Great Britain and do not need to appoint a responsible person in the EU.

However the changes could make it more difficult to get materials or components from Great Britain.

The NI-based artist Claire Brennan has blogged about the impact on her business with the loss of a supplier of a specialist plastic.

She wrote that when the regulation comes into force "immediately this affects my suppliers, the folks I get my mylar from, for stencils, will not longer ship to NI after this date".

"Ridiculously I am unable to source mylar in Northern Ireland."

A UK government spokesperson said: “We are supporting small and medium-sized enterprises across the whole of the UK to get ready for GPSR and will be publishing more guidance shortly.

"We will keep this under review and continue to engage businesses to ensure they are supported to trade freely."

The government-backed UK Export Academy is holding an online information and training event on GPSR on Friday.