Manufacturer duties: design, conformity, labelling and passport duties for battery makers

A manufacturer, in Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, is a person who manufactures a battery, or who has a battery designed or manufactured, and who markets that battery under its name or trade mark. Article 38 sets out the obligations of manufacturers, and the manufacturer role is the origin of most passport data. Design decisions, material choices, test results, carbon calculations and recycled content calculations all begin with the manufacturer or with suppliers acting for the manufacturer.

A passport record that is inaccurate at the manufacturer stage cannot be corrected downstream by an importer or distributor, because downstream actors do not hold the design and test evidence. Manufacturer duties are therefore the foundation of record accuracy.

What must a manufacturer ensure before placing on the market?

Before placing a battery on the market or putting it into service, including for its own purposes, a manufacturer must ensure that the battery has been designed and manufactured in accordance with Articles 6 to 10 and Articles 12 and 14, that it is accompanied by clear instructions and safety information in a language easily understood by end users as determined by the Member State, and that it is marked and labelled in accordance with Article 13. The manufacturer must draw up technical documentation under Annex VIII and carry out, or have carried out, the relevant conformity assessment procedure under Article 17. The manufacturer must draw up the EU declaration of conformity under Article 18 and affix the CE marking where required. Each of those steps produces evidence that the passport record later references: technical documentation, test reports, declaration reference, and marking. A manufacturer who places a battery without completing those steps has not merely created a record gap. The placing itself is defective.

How do manufacturer duties create passport data?

Manufacturer duties create passport data in three streams. The design stream creates identity, chemistry, capacity, performance and safety data. The supply chain stream creates composition, origin, due diligence and recycled content data, through supplier evidence and chain of custody records. The conformity stream creates declaration, test and carbon data, through the conformity assessment and the declarations under Articles 7 and 8. The passport record draws the three streams together into one model layer, with the manufacturer as the owner of the model layer. The owner role matters: where a stream is incomplete, the manufacturer is the actor who can complete it, by obtaining supplier evidence, commissioning testing, or completing a calculation. Downstream actors can check completeness, but they cannot originate design or test evidence that only the manufacturer holds.

What must a manufacturer do after placing on the market?

After placing, a manufacturer must keep technical documentation and the declaration of conformity available for the period the Regulation requires, must take corrective action where a battery is found not to conform, and must cooperate with market surveillance authorities. The manufacturer must also ensure that the passport record remains accurate and current for the model, through version control for specification changes, and must ensure that unit history can be appended where the system provides for it. A manufacturer who treats placing as the end of responsibility misunderstands the record: the model layer may be stable, but version changes, corrections and evidence updates continue, and the manufacturer remains the owner of the model layer throughout. Where a manufacturer ceases to exist or transfers the model, succession arrangements must preserve the record and the evidence behind it, as the succession guide explains.

What happens when a manufacturer uses a supplier or a contractor?

A manufacturer who has a battery designed or manufactured by another person remains the manufacturer for the purposes of the Regulation where the battery is marketed under its name or trade mark. Contract manufacturing does not transfer manufacturer duties to the contractor. The manufacturer must obtain the evidence needed for the passport, the declaration and the technical documentation from the contractor, and must verify that evidence to the extent the conformity assessment requires. A contract that states that the contractor is responsible for compliance does not change the regulatory position, although it may create a contractual remedy between the parties. The passport record should show the manufacturer as the legal person responsible, not the contractor, unless the contractor is itself the manufacturer under the definition. Confusion between contractual responsibility and regulatory responsibility is a common source of record errors in contract manufacturing chains.

What does the manufacturer duties table summarise?

What limits apply to manufacturer claims?

A manufacturer field in a passport states the legal person responsible for the model. It does not state that the manufacturer performed every test itself, that every supplier was audited, or that the battery is compliant. Those statements require the underlying evidence. This guide gives general educational information only and does not give legal advice for a particular manufacturer, battery or transaction.