Journey
Set up as an electronics or electrical equipment manufacturer
Learning path for new electronics and electrical equipment manufacturers and importers placing products on the GB and UK market. Work out which conformity regimes apply, get your products UKCA marked, set up your ongoing producer-responsibility duties for WEEE and batteries, and verify you have covered everything.
What this journey is for
Building an electronics or electrical equipment business means you are taking on the role of a manufacturer or importer in the eyes of UK product-safety law. Before your first product reaches a customer, you become responsible for proving it is safe and lawful to sell, and for the duties that follow it through its whole life. This journey walks you through that path in the order you will live it, from working out what applies to you through to checking you have everything in place.
It does not give you the step-by-step instructions or the figures — those live in the guides it points to. This is the map: it tells you where you are, why each stage matters, and which guide to open next.
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Work out which conformity regimes apply to your product
The same product can sit under several overlapping rules at once. This depends on what it does, how it is powered, and what it connects to. Getting this picture right at the start saves you from discovering a missed obligation late, when it is expensive to fix. This first step is about orientation: understanding the landscape before you commit time or money to any one route. It also helps you decide, honestly, whether your product is ready for the work that follows.
Which conformity regime applies to your product
Orientation to the overlapping product-conformity regimes for electronics and electrical equipment, so you can identify every set of rules your product falls under before you start assessment.
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Carry out conformity assessment and apply your marking
This is where you commit. Once you know which regimes apply, you have to demonstrate your product meets them and document that you have done so. You then have to mark the product accordingly before it goes on sale. This step turns your idea into a sellable product, and it carries the highest stakes. You are formally declaring your product compliant and putting your name behind it. Plan it as a project in its own right, not a tick-box at the end.
Conformity assessment and UKCA marking for the GB market
How to assess your product against the regimes that apply, draw up your declaration of conformity, and apply UKCA marking before placing it on the Great Britain market.
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Set up your ongoing producer-responsibility duties
Getting a product marked and on sale is not the end of your duties — further obligations continue for the product's whole life. As a producer of electrical equipment and of products containing batteries, you take on continuing obligations for how those products are recovered and recycled once customers are finished with them. These duties run year after year and need to be set up properly from the outset. Build them into how your business operates rather than treating them as an afterthought.
Producer responsibility for WEEE and batteries
Setting up and meeting your ongoing producer-responsibility duties for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and for batteries, including how registration and reporting fit into your year.
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Verify you have covered everything
Once the moving parts are in motion, take a step back and check the whole picture holds together. A compliance checklist lets you confirm, in one place, that each obligation is genuinely met rather than assumed. Use it as your readiness review before launch. Come back to it periodically — your obligations can shift as your products and product range change.
Electronics and electrical equipment compliance checklist
A checklist to verify you have met your conformity, marking, and producer-responsibility obligations, so you can confirm you are ready to sell and stay compliant as you grow.
You will also need the general business set-up duties
Alongside the electronics-specific path above, every manufacturing business carries a set of general obligations that are not unique to this sector but are just as compulsory. As you build the business you will also need to:
- protect the people who work for you — meet your workplace health and safety duties, including the assessments and controls that apply where you handle substances and use machinery. See the workplace health and safety legal obligations guide.
- hold employers' liability insurance once you take anyone on. See the employers' liability insurance guide.
- handle personal data lawfully — most businesses must complete data protection registration with the ICO. See the register with the ICO guide.
These run in parallel with the product-conformity journey rather than after it, so set them up as you establish the business.
Where this leaves you
You now have the shape of the whole task: understand which regimes apply, prove conformity and mark your product, set up your ongoing producer-responsibility duties, and verify the lot — all while putting the general business set-up obligations in place around it. Work the four guides in order and you will have a clear, defensible position from your first product launch onwards.