Importing from China to Romania
China is the most common non-EU sourcing route into Romania, and the compliance picture is always the same: the goods land, customs is cleared, and from the moment they are sold on the Romanian market you are the producer for the packaging around them and for the products themselves. The Chinese factory carries none of it, and nothing in the shipping documents starts the process for you.
Where the obligation starts
Customs clearance is a tax event, not an environmental one. Duty and VAT are settled at the border; the producer obligations start when the goods are placed on the Romanian market, which in practice means when you sell or distribute them.
That means the first sale from your first container already belongs in a monthly declaration. Registration is not something to arrange later, once volumes justify it, and months in which you sell nothing still need a zero declaration once you are registered.
What is counted in a typical container
| What arrives | Counted as | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Master cartons and inner boxes | Paper and cardboard packaging | Counted by weight, per material |
| Pallets, corner protectors, strapping | Wood, plastic, other packaging | Reusable pallets are treated differently — we assess them |
| Stretch film, bubble wrap, polybags | Plastic packaging | Easy to forget and frequently the biggest gap |
| Retail packaging on the product | Sales packaging | Counted even when the product is sold on unchanged |
| The products themselves, if electrical | Electrical and electronic equipment | A separate registration and a collective take-back scheme |
| Batteries, loose or built in | Batteries and accumulators | Declared separately from the product |
What we ask you for
- Your article list with a short description per product, so we can classify the streams correctly.
- Packing lists or specifications: carton dimensions and weights, film and pallet use per shipment.
- Units placed on the Romanian market per month — sales or dispatch data is usually enough.
- For electrical goods: category, unit weight, and whether a battery is included.
- Nothing in Romanian, and nothing in a fixed template. We work with the files you already produce.
When the factory does not give you weights
How an import operation gets set up
- 1Range review
We go through your product list and mark which items bring packaging only and which also bring equipment or battery duties.
- 2Weight model
One-off work: weights per article and per shipment configuration, from your data or from samples.
- 3Registration and scheme
Producer registration for each stream, plus a contract with a licensed Romanian organisation for your targets.
- 4Monthly filing
You send one file, we calculate, declare by the 25th and give you the amount and the payment reference.
If you are the Chinese brand rather than the importer
A manufacturer or brand in China that wants to sell into Romania under its own name — through its own webshop or a marketplace — cannot register from abroad. It appoints an authorised representative established in Romania, who registers, contracts the scheme, files the declarations and receives correspondence from the authorities.
We take that role and communicate in English, so your team never has to deal with Romanian-language filings or authority letters.
Frequently asked questions
We only import small quantities by air. Does this still apply?
Yes. There is no minimum quantity that removes the obligation; the amounts scale with volume, but registration and monthly declarations do not depend on size.
The goods arrive already packaged. Is the packaging still ours?
Yes. The packaging you place on the Romanian market is yours to declare, whether you produced it or it arrived around the goods. Anything you add here counts on top.
Do we have to declare pallets and stretch film?
Transport packaging is in scope. Reusable pallets are handled differently from single-use ones, so we look at how yours actually circulate before deciding how to treat them.
We sell imported electronics on a marketplace. What extra applies?
Electrical equipment brings its own registration and a collective take-back scheme, and any batteries are declared separately. Marketplaces also increasingly ask for a registration number before you can list.
We have been importing for two years without registering. What now?
We reconstruct the past periods from your import and sales records, quantify the exposure and file the corrections. Voluntary regularisation is treated far better than a gap found during a review.
Tell us what you sell in Romania
Send us your product and packaging types and roughly how much you ship to Romania. We reply with the obligations that apply to you and what registration would involve.