Fulfilment in the Netherlands for Non-EU Companies

A company established outside the EU can hold stock at a Dutch warehouse and sell across the EU without setting up a Dutch company. The provider receives the goods, files the import declaration as your customs representative, and the import VAT is deferred under an Article 23 licence held through a fiscal representative, so nothing is paid in cash at the border. From that one stock point the warehouse ships consumer and business orders to every EU country, and goods for the United Kingdom, Switzerland or Türkiye can leave again from bonded storage without EU duty having been paid. Providers in the Zendeq network take accounts from a few pallets upward, connect to Shopify, WooCommerce and the main marketplaces, and give you a named contact. This article covers what you need before the first shipment, how selling without a Dutch entity works, and where to put the stock; the detailed articles on each topic are linked throughout. It is written from the requests that reach Zendeq from companies outside the EU and from the questions the providers in the network send back before they quote.

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What you need before goods can be imported

Three things have to be in place before a container or air shipment can be cleared into free circulation in the Netherlands in your name: an EU VAT number, an EORI number and an Article 23 licence.

An EU VAT number. A company outside the EU that moves its own goods into the Netherlands and sells from Dutch stock has to account for Dutch VAT. It registers with the Belastingdienst office for foreign businesses, or it appoints a fiscal representative who registers on its behalf. No Dutch legal entity and no Chamber of Commerce registration is required for this, see Do You Need a Dutch Company to Store Goods in the Netherlands.

An EORI number. Every company that deals with Dutch Customs needs one, including when a customs agent files the declarations. A company headquartered outside the EU applies to Dutch Customs with the form for companies established outside the EU; the number is free of charge. One EORI number is valid across the EU.

An Article 23 licence. The licence moves the import VAT from a cash payment at import to an entry on the periodic VAT return, where it is declared and deducted in the same return. A foreign company cannot apply for the licence itself; the fiscal representative applies and holds it. The full mechanics are in Article 23 and Fiscal Representation.

The division of work is fixed in practice. The 3PL arranges the import declaration as your indirect customs representative, the storage, the order handling and the carriers. You, or the fiscal representative on your behalf, arrange the VAT registration, the Article 23 licence, the EORI number and the periodic VAT, OSS and Intrastat filings. A number of Dutch 3PLs offer fiscal representation as part of the same contract; the providers block below lists them. A company outside the EU cannot act as declarant on its own import declaration, so the customs declaration is always filed by a representative established in the EU who is jointly liable for the customs debt. For who can act as importer of record, see IOR and EOR Services.

Both starting points arrive at Zendeq. Some brands already hold an EU VAT number and an EORI number, usually from earlier sales through a marketplace in another EU country, and need only the customs representative and the warehouse; their request can go out straight away. Others start from nothing and need the fiscal representative appointed first, and their start date moves with the permit, which the Belastingdienst aims to decide within eight weeks. A request that states which of the two applies gets quotes that can be compared; a request that leaves it open gets questions.

Selling without a Dutch entity

General fiscal representation. The foreign company registers with the Belastingdienst and receives its own Dutch VAT number; the representative files the VAT returns and the EC Sales List on that number and may act for all supplies of goods and services, intra-Community acquisitions and imports. A company may appoint only one general representative. The representative has to be established in the Netherlands and provide financial security, and the Belastingdienst aims to decide on the permit within eight weeks. This is the usual route for a brand that imports, stores and sells consumer and business orders from the Netherlands, because it also covers the distance sales to consumers in other EU countries. See Article 23 and Fiscal Representation.

Limited fiscal representation. The foreign company does not register in the Netherlands at all. The representative, often a customs broker or a 3PL with a VAT licence, uses its own licence and sub-number for the import and the supplies that follow it, for example the onward sale of a container to EU business customers. Distance sales to consumers are excluded from this arrangement, so it suits B2B importers and brands that sell on to a distributor, not a webshop shipping parcels across the EU.

The two services are also bought separately. A request from a UK company in 2026 asked for import clearance under Article 23 only, with the goods handled elsewhere, and customs brokers and 3PLs with their own customs department responded to it as a stand-alone customs job. The reverse happens as well: a brand with its own fiscal representative in place asks the warehouse only for the declarations and the handling.

When a BV becomes necessary. Stock at a third-party warehouse, with no premises or staff of your own, does not create a Dutch establishment for VAT and usually not for corporate income tax either. A Dutch BV becomes relevant when you need a local contracting entity for banks, retailers or marketplaces, when you employ staff in the Netherlands, or when a product regulation requires an EU-established party that a service provider cannot supply, see EU Responsible Person Rules for Non-EU Brands. UK companies have the same options after Brexit; the UK-specific steps are in EU Fulfilment for UK Companies After Brexit.

Bonded storage and re-export

A customs warehouse holds non-EU goods without duty and import VAT until they are released into free circulation. The 3PL holds the customs warehouse authorisation, so you need no authorisation of your own. It pays when part of the stock leaves the EU again: a brand that serves the EU, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Türkiye from one Dutch stock point releases only the EU share into free circulation and re-exports the rest without duty and VAT having been paid. It also pays when the import duty rate on your products is high, because duty is only due on what is actually sold inside the EU, and when goods are relabelled or kitted for different markets before release. Bonded storage does not pay for a brand that sells its whole stock inside the EU; the normal import under Article 23 is simpler and cheaper. Requests in the Zendeq archive that combine EU fulfilment with a one-off wholesale shipment to a non-EU customer are the typical case. Details on authorisations and the inward processing variant are in IPR Bonded Warehouses in the Netherlands.

Marketplaces and webshop integrations

Amazon EU. Stock imported in bulk into the Netherlands is replenished to Amazon fulfilment centres from the Dutch warehouse, or shipped to consumers directly under Amazon merchant fulfilment. Dutch 3PLs offer FBA prep, labelling and carton compliance as a standard service. Amazon stopped moving FBA inventory between the United Kingdom and the EU in 2021, so UK sellers import into the Netherlands and replenish from there.

Bol.com. The largest marketplace in the Netherlands and Belgium requires a Dutch or Belgian return address and delivery within the promised window; most Dutch e-commerce fulfilment providers connect to Bol.com and ship Bol orders with PostNL or DHL. Requests from Belgian and non-EU sellers on Bol.com regularly arrive at Zendeq with five pallets and a few hundred orders a week.

Shopify and WooCommerce. A 3PL expects an order feed from the shop system into its warehouse management system, either through the shop's native integration or through a connector. Order status and stock levels flow back. Smaller providers accept a Shopify or WooCommerce account from the first month; for an ERP such as NetSuite or SAP the integration is a project of several weeks that the provider will price separately. Providers ask which marketplaces you sell on and which webshop software you use because that decides the carrier mix and the integration work.

VAT on marketplace and webshop sales from Dutch stock is Dutch VAT for Dutch consumers and the VAT of the destination country for consumers elsewhere in the EU once your EU-wide cross-border consumer sales exceed EUR 10,000 a year, reported through the One Stop Shop. The Import One Stop Shop does not apply here: it only covers consignments of EUR 150 or less shipped to the consumer from outside the EU, and goods already stored in an EU warehouse do not qualify.

Dangerous goods and lithium batteries

Lithium batteries are over-represented in requests from brands outside the EU: consumer electronics, cordless tools and personal care devices arrive with cells and batteries shipped under UN3480 or UN3481. Storage of packaged dangerous goods in the Netherlands has to comply with PGS 15, and lithium batteries have their own guideline, PGS 37-2, so only a part of the Dutch warehouses accept them. The Zendeq directory lists 42 companies with a dangerous goods ADR licence, 24 of them in the Netherlands. In one request from a brand outside the EU the dangerous goods flag came from nothing more than the lithium-ion batteries built into cordless consumer devices; the brand already held an EU VAT number and an EORI number, so the request went out as a fulfilment request with a dangerous goods flag and no fiscal representation.

A provider that accepts these goods asks for the UN number, the watt-hour rating per cell and battery, the UN 38.3 test summary, the safety data sheet, the quantity per class and the number of orders per country, because the last item decides which parcel carriers can be used. What counts as dangerous goods for a warehouse, what PGS 15 and PGS 37-2 require, and what to put in a request are covered in ADR Transport and Storage and Lithium Battery Transport.

Starting small

Most requests from brands outside the EU start with between one and ten pallets, no warehouse in place yet, and a start date of as soon as possible. Dutch providers accept this. Multi-client fulfilment warehouses price storage per pallet or bin per week and handling per order and per item, with a monthly minimum or a fixed account fee at the smaller providers; there is no volume you have to commit to for a first year. What providers do ask is a realistic order estimate and the number of SKUs, because an indirect customs representative carries liability for the customs debt and prices a new account with unpredictable volumes with a deposit or a higher starting rate.

The provider side is as concrete. The questions that come back on almost every request are:

• Number of SKUs, with fast and slow movers
• Orders per month, split into consumer and business orders
• Sales platform: Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, Bol.com
• Average order weight and picks per order
• Packaging requirements
• Destination countries, because they decide the carrier mix

One provider in the network declined to buy a lead because the expected volume was missing from it. One request from a brand outside the EU carried a hard requirement that is worth copying: a named contact at the warehouse who can solve a problem the same day, which ruled out the large operators that offer an email desk instead and left the multi-client warehouses.

A request from the archive shows a realistic first-year setup. A brand outside the EU with one product range of fewer than twenty SKUs had no European stock and sold to business customers in six EU countries from its own Shopify shop. The request asked for customs clearance, bonded storage, pick and pack, returns handling and an integration with the shop, with one pallet to begin with and goods arriving both by air and in sea containers. The first year for such an account consists of a fiscal representative appointment and the Article 23 licence in the first two months, a test import of one pallet to confirm the declaration and the shop integration, and a switch from air to consolidated sea shipments once the order pattern is known. Providers that respond to such a request are typically multi-client warehouses with their own customs department rather than the large contract logistics operators.

Where to put the stock

The inbound mode decides the location. Goods that arrive by air, perishables with a short season, high-value electronics and express consignments belong near Schiphol, see Warehousing and fulfilment near Schiphol. Sea containers from Asia, Türkiye and the Americas are stripped near the port, where bonded storage and customs departments are concentrated, see Warehousing and fulfilment in Rotterdam. Container flows that are distributed by truck as B2B pallets and parcels into Germany, Belgium and Austria go to Venlo and Limburg, where Duisburg is 45 km by road, see Warehousing and fulfilment in Venlo. Consumer orders for the Netherlands and the Benelux with Bol.com and webshop integrations are served from the Amsterdam region, see Warehousing and e-commerce fulfilment in Amsterdam. The national overview with all hubs is in Warehousing in the Netherlands.

Location is also decided by what is already in place. A company outside the EU that held about five hundred pallets of slow-moving stock in a German warehouse asked Zendeq in 2026 for a Dutch provider for long-term storage, packaging and both business and consumer orders to Europe and the United States, with ten to twenty fragile items that needed special packaging and a WooCommerce shop that could be connected but did not have to be. For such a request the region matters less than the pallet rate, the handling of fragile goods and the parcel rates to the United States, so it went to providers across the country rather than to one hub.

Costs

Storage and handling rates for the Netherlands, with the regional differences between the Randstad, Limburg and the east, are in Global Pallet Storage Rates Compared. How quotes from several providers on one brief differ, and which items to compare, is in Comparing 3PL Quotes in the Netherlands. Fiscal representation is priced separately from the warehouse contract; the typical fee structure is in the Article 23 article linked above.

Providers that offer fiscal representation and customs clearance

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a Dutch company?

No. A company established outside the EU can hold stock at a Dutch 3PL and sell from it with a Dutch VAT registration or a fiscal representative, an EORI number and a customs representative for the import declarations. A BV is only needed when you want a local contracting entity, employ staff in the Netherlands or face a product rule that requires an EU-established company.

Can my 3PL be my fiscal representative?

Yes, if the 3PL holds a fiscal representation licence from the Belastingdienst, and a number of Dutch providers do. Otherwise the 3PL works alongside a separate fiscal representative; the warehouse files the customs declarations and the representative files the VAT returns. The providers block above shows which companies offer both.

Do I pay VAT at import?

Not in cash when an Article 23 licence is in place. The import VAT is declared on the periodic VAT return and deducted in the same return. Without the licence, 21 percent import VAT is paid to Dutch Customs at clearance and reclaimed later through the VAT return, which ties up cash for months.

Can I ship outside the EU from a Dutch warehouse?

Yes. Orders for the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway or Türkiye are exported with an export declaration filed by the 3PL. If a meaningful share of the stock leaves the EU again, holding it in a customs warehouse avoids paying EU duty and VAT on goods that never enter the EU market.

Can I start with a few pallets?

Yes. Multi-client fulfilment warehouses in the Netherlands accept accounts from one pallet and price storage per pallet or bin and handling per order. Smaller providers charge a monthly minimum or an account fee, and a customs representative may ask for a deposit while volumes are unknown.

Which marketplaces can a Dutch 3PL serve?

Amazon in all EU countries through FBA replenishment or merchant fulfilment, Bol.com in the Netherlands and Belgium, and the brand's own Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento shop through an integration. Zalando, Kaufland and Otto are served by the larger e-commerce fulfilment providers; ask for the specific channel in your request.