Holding spare parts and demo units in Europe
A checklist for hardware and medtech teams: what needs to sit in Europe, what can stay home, and how parts and demo kits are imported.
Suppose an equipment maker has three field units in the EU, an occasional demo request, and a part that fails every few months. The details are hypothetical, for the mechanics only. Each time, someone at head office finds a courier, fills in an export form, and waits. Whether to build a warehouse is not the real question. It is which of these items actually needs to sit inside the EU customs territory, and which can keep travelling from wherever they already are.
What actually needs to be here
- Parts that fail on a schedule you can already see. If a component has failed twice in the last year on installed units, the next failure is predictable even if the date is not. A part that sits on a shelf in Europe reaches the customer in days. A part that ships from outside the EU on demand reaches the customer after export paperwork, transit, and import clearance. Whatever the courier’s own schedule adds comes on top of that.
- Demo units that travel to more than one country. A single demo kit may go from a trade show in one member state to a customer site in another, then to a third. That kit is doing the job stock is for. Each leg by courier repeats the same customs question. Each leg from a European base is a movement inside the EU, with no new import at each border.
- Swap or loaner units used while a faulty unit is repaired. If the commercial promise is a working replacement while the original is fixed, that promise depends on a unit being close enough to ship same-week. A loaner sourced from outside the EU on request is not close.
- The specific parts behind your own failure history, not the whole catalogue. A parts list built from actual service tickets is usually short. Holding the whole catalogue in Europe on the assumption that anything might fail is a different, much larger decision. Most teams have not actually tested it against real data yet.
What can stay where it is
- Parts that have never failed on an installed unit. There is no operational argument for holding stock against a failure mode you have not seen.
- A single demo unit used only at head office or at one recurring event. Suppose it goes to the same place each time and does not travel between customer sites. Then importing and re-exporting it once, as needed, is simpler than holding it under a standing arrangement.
- Low-value consumables ordered rarely, where courier delay is a real cost but a small one. Not every gap is worth solving with a European base; some are worth solving by shortening the supplier’s own dispatch time instead.
- Anything still in development, before the failure pattern exists. Holding stock against a product that has not shipped in volume yet is holding stock against a guess.
How parts and demo kits are actually imported
Two different customs treatments cover most of this, and they are not interchangeable.
Release for free circulation is the usual route for parts and swap units that stay in the EU. Those units are going to be sold, used up in a repair, or otherwise consumed in the EU. Once released, the goods are, for trading purposes, European goods. They can move to a customer, sit on a shelf, or go into a repair without a further import event each time. This is the default route for stock that is here to be used, not sent back.
Temporary admission is set out in Article 250 of the Union Customs Code, Regulation (EU) No 952/2013. It fits goods that are here to be shown or used and then leave again, not sold. It covers goods “intended for re-export”, with total or partial relief from import duty. The condition is that “the goods are not intended to undergo any change, except normal depreciation due to the use made of them.” A demonstration unit that travels the EU for a season and then goes home is the clean case for this procedure. The maximum period is 24 months for the same purpose and the same authorisation holder, extendable in exceptional circumstances. A separate article on this blog covers demo equipment specifically. It goes through what happens if a unit under this procedure is later sold instead of re-exported.
Holding stock under bond instead of releasing it is worth considering only where the goods are high in value and move in smaller volumes. In that case, deferring duty and import VAT until each release frees real, meaningful money. Most spare parts are lower in value and move as individual units against individual failures. For them, release for free circulation on arrival is the simpler route, and the one most of these flows actually use.
What stays with your advisers
The exact parts list comes from your own service history, not from a general rule.
Whether returns and repaired units flow back through the same base is a separate question. The mechanics of a return that would otherwise cross the border twice are set out in the return that crosses the border twice.
None of this is customs or tax advice. Two questions remain for each specific parts flow: which procedure fits it, and how the import is declared. The operator handling the import settles both together with the client’s own customs adviser.
How this runs at EFC
EFC’s base in Portugal is run with our logistics partner. There, parts and demo units sit on the same floor as the rest of a brand’s stock. A failing part gets picked and shipped the way any other order does. By the time it is needed, it is already inside the EU. Demo kits that move between countries go out and come back without a fresh export file each time.
The trigger for this move is rarely a single dramatic failure. More often it is the fifth time in a year that someone spends a morning finding a courier for a part. That part could have shipped from a shelf ten minutes away.
What we hold and how it is imported is scoped with the client first: which parts, which failure pattern, and which route fits the goods. The wider question of building a stock base for distributors and projects, not only for spares, is covered in B2B and institutional supply.
Sources
| Label | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Temporary admission, scope | non-Union goods “intended for re-export” may be subject to specific use “with total or partial relief from import duty” | Regulation (EU) No 952/2013, Article 250, EUR-Lex, opened 2026-09-25 |
| Temporary admission, condition on the goods | ”the goods are not intended to undergo any change, except normal depreciation due to the use made of them” | Regulation (EU) No 952/2013, Article 250(a), EUR-Lex, opened 2026-09-25 |
| Temporary admission, maximum period | 24 months for the same purpose under the same authorisation holder, extendable in exceptional circumstances to an overall limit of 10 years | Regulation (EU) No 952/2013, Article 251, EUR-Lex, opened 2026-09-25 |