Having asked this question of Trading Standards officers on several occasions (for various reasons), I am here to tell you that, in the UK at least, there is no legal obligation to put the country of manufacture on any goods, whether made in the UK, EU, USA or anywhere else. However, if you do put an origin mark on, it has to be correct and not misleading within the terms of the various acts concerning sale of goods, trades descriptions etc.
There is NO legal definition of 'manufacture' in the UK, although your definition as 'final point of assembly' is, I know, acceptable to UK Trading Standards. They will also accept (at a pinch) operations which are essentially simply final insertion of goods made 'overseas' (a UK-centric term, I accept) with accessories into packaging. Quite what HM Customs and Excise want for import duty calculation purposes is another matter entirely. They are (almost literally) a law unto themselves. I would not be surprised (cf separate posting from Gray McInturff) to discover that they wanted to know the origin(s) of the components and to apportion 'place of manufacture' accordingly. Nick. At 08:13 -0400 13/4/99, WOODS, RICHARD wrote: >My company has for years produced products in Puerto Rico and has labeled >our products as "made in the USA". A couple of years ago, UK customs decided >in their own wisdom that Puerto Rico is not part of the USA and that our >products must be labeled "made in Puerto Rico". > >So, to answer your question, the final assembly point is the point of >manufacture. But as you can see from my example, what we really have here is >a political situation. So in reality, any country can require you to label >as they see fit. I have noticed that on cars sold in the US, there is an >explanation on the sticker as to what was manufactured where. Other >countries may have this requirement for some types of products. However, we >have not encountered this need for office equipment. > --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] (the list administrators).
