Weee

[Derek59]

WEEE (Waste electronic and electric equipment). This EU-wide directive will come into force next year and will impact on many companies. My company exports equipment that probably falls into the realm of WEEE. In many cases we export direct to customers (these are industrial type customers) in a number of countries in the EU. I am finding very difficult to know how to deal with this as the infrastructure and way this is going to be run differs from country to country and its is still in the process of being created - yet its meant to be up and running next year. As far as I can understand it we are responsible for registering with each country (at a significant cost I think) and have to put in place arrangments for subsequent disposal of our equipment at end of life. The cost and complications of this are likely to be high It may be uneconomic to sell to a number of countries where the number of sales are not so high A possible solution is to use an agent in each country who would take on the WEEE responsiblity. But we don't want to do that as our customers would end up paying a lot more (agents tend to be quite greedy and want to put quite large mark-ups on our price) and that would have subsequent impact on our sales I am sure. Also in countries with low sales an agent may not be keen anyway. We have spent years building up our sales by direct selling - it would destroy all our work in this respect. Our product must be infinitesimaly small in terms of the waste problem, its all the tvs and fridge freezers that are the problem yet we have to take this on because the idiots in the European Parliament couldn't run a fish and chip shop Are there other companies out there in the same situation?

Best regards to all (this is my first post)

Derek Sharp

[emubill]

Firstly welcome to the forum Derek.

Sounds like this could be a big problem. I have never heard of this before so have no experience. One suggestion though - if this applies to everyone will you not see a rise in all countries of new companies who deal solely with the disposal of these products - a whole new industry so to speak. The companies would then be able to carry out the work right across the board, there would be competition and hopefully the price would be lowered due to this.

It could be a good opportunity for someone to develop?

Nige

[Derek59]

Yes Nigel in the UK there are recyling companies getting set up to deal with this. But we export 98% of our production so the UK is not an issue its the rest of Europe. Every country is setting up its own WEEE rules, infrastructure and legislation, but its all orientated like the UK to the home situation and direct exporters are not really in the equation. It fine if you are going to sell 10,000 tvs to Lithuania, but 3 table top gas purifiers with an expected life of 10 years plus? And yet we are expected ato register and pay each year for a disposal that might not even happen. Also it looks likely that there is a flat fee for registering each year with each country totally out of proportion to what we as small exporters are actually selling.

Derek

[Camelot]

hi Derek.

you facing a big problem in the realm of exports as a company , you can face losting in your capital