Five recycled skateboard wood rings resting on weathered timber, with green, pink, purple and red layers showing

Where Baltic Dew Ships, and Why the EU Is No Longer on the List

Three new rules, one sole trader, and a decision I did not want to make

Baltic Dew ships to most of the world. The United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and a long list besides. The European Union is the one place no longer on that list.

The reason is not postage and it is not customs paperwork. It is three separate pieces of EU regulation that arrived within twenty months of each other, and the cost of meeting all three falls on a one person business in almost exactly the same way it falls on a company with warehouses in every member state.

Where does Baltic Dew ship now?

Worldwide, with the EU removed from the list. If you are in the UK, North America, Australia or New Zealand, or in a European country outside the EU such as Norway or Switzerland, nothing has changed. Postage, delivery times and returns are all the same as before.

If you are in an EU country, the checkout will no longer offer a delivery option. That is not a fault on the site. It is deliberate, and I am sorry about it.

What changed?

Three things, all separate, all aimed at goods entering the EU from outside it.

Rule	Applies from	What it asks of a UK seller
General Product Safety Regulation, (EU) 2023/988	13 December 2024	A named responsible person located inside the EU, plus technical documentation and a risk assessment held for every product category
Customs duty on small parcels	1 July 2026	The 150 euro duty exemption removed and replaced with a flat 3 euro duty per item in the parcel
Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, (EU) 2025/40	12 August 2026	Registration for packaging in every member state you send to, and an authorised representative appointed in each one

The first one I dealt with. Earlier this year I worked through the product safety side properly: records and risk assessments for each product category, and a named representative inside the EU. It took a long time for a business of one person, but it was possible, and once it was done EU delivery went live.

Then two more arrived. The customs change in July, and the packaging regulation in August. EU orders had barely started coming in.

The packaging one is where it stopped being manageable. Under that regulation there is no single European licence. Registration in one country counts for nothing in the next. A seller who is not established in the EU has to register in each member state where the packaging is first made available, and appoint a separate authorised representative in each of those states. Twenty seven countries means up to twenty seven registrations and twenty seven representatives.

Why does this hit a small business harder than a large one?

Because the cost is fixed per country, not per parcel.

A registration fee and a representative in Germany cost the same whether you send four parcels there a year or four hundred thousand. The paperwork takes the same number of hours either way. A large retailer spreads that cost across millions of orders and treats it as a line in an operating budget. A sole trader spreads it across a handful of orders and it becomes the whole margin, several times over.

None of the three rules ask how big you are. There is no threshold for a maker working alone, no reduced tier for someone sending a ring in a padded envelope, no distinction between a brand with a hundred stores across the world and a handmade business trying to do something small and creative. The obligations are written the same for both, so the burden lands very differently.

The part that is worth saying plainly

Rules written to make products safer are reasonable. Rules that cost the same for four parcels as for four hundred thousand are not neutral. They quietly decide which businesses can afford to be in the market, and it is not the small ones.

Is Baltic Dew the only one stopping?

No, and that is the part I keep coming back to. UK makers have been closing EU delivery since the product safety rules came in at the end of 2024, and more did so through the summer of 2026 as the packaging deadline arrived. Independent shops, one person studios, small craft brands. The same notice, worded slightly differently, appearing on site after site.

I would rather be wrong about this. I would rather it turns out there is a workable route for a business this size, or that the rules get looked at again with sole traders in mind. If that happens, EU delivery comes straight back.

Why this one is difficult for me personally

Baltic Dew takes its name from the Baltic, because that is where I am from. Selling to customers in my own country and across that part of Europe was one of the things I liked most about running this. Those orders meant more than the money on them.

Losing them is the hardest part of this decision, and it is harder for having only just got there. The product safety work was done, the representative was in place, the delivery option was on. It lasted months.

I did not close it because the EU market was not worth having. I closed it because a sole trader cannot carry twenty seven registrations, twenty seven representatives and the record keeping that goes with them, and keep making the work at the same time.

What happens if you are an EU customer?

Orders already placed are unaffected and will be sent as normal.
New orders cannot be taken to an EU delivery address.
Delivery to a UK address still works, so if you have someone in the UK who can forward a parcel, that route is open.
If the position changes, the shop newsletter is where it will be announced first.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still order from Baltic Dew if I live in the EU?

Not to an EU delivery address. Delivery to a UK address still works. Every other country Baltic Dew shipped to before is unaffected.

Is this because of Brexit?

Only in the background. Brexit is the reason a UK business is treated as a non-EU seller when it ships into the EU. What actually forced this decision is the set of EU rules introduced since then, in particular the packaging regulation applying from 12 August 2026, which requires registration and a representative in each member state separately.

Why not just pay the extra cost and carry on?

Because the cost does not scale with the size of the business. Registration fees and representative fees are charged per country, per year, regardless of how many parcels are sent. For a business sending a small number of orders to each country, the compliance cost is larger than the sales.

What is PPWR and does it apply to small sellers?

PPWR is the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, (EU) 2025/40, applying from 12 August 2026. It applies to producers placing packaged goods on the EU market, including sellers based outside the EU. There is no general exemption for very small businesses, and no single EU-wide registration.

Will Baltic Dew ship to the EU again?

If a workable route appears for a business this size, yes. That could be a single EU-wide registration, a genuine small seller threshold, or a compliance service priced for sole traders rather than importers. Until then, no.