Can you import from China without a warehouse or a business address?

What establishment means, and why a home address often passes

The requirement people worry about is the EORI number. GOV.UK puts it plainly: to get an EORI number, your business usually needs to have premises based in the country you want to import to or export from, and this is called being established. It then lists what counts as premises: a registered office, a central headquarters, or a permanent business establishment, meaning premises where some of your customs-related activities take place and your human and technical resources are permanently located.

A registered office is the first item on that list, and a limited company registered at a residential address has one. A sole trader working from home is running the business from a place where the customs-related activity happens and the resources sit. Neither case requires a unit on an industrial estate.

If you genuinely are not eligible, GOV.UK gives the consequence rather than a workaround: you appoint someone to deal with customs on your behalf, and that person gets the EORI number instead of you. Read that sentence carefully, because the next section is about what it means.

The offer to import under somebody else's EORI

Sooner or later somebody will offer to bring your goods in under their number to save you the trouble. Before accepting, read HMRC on customs debt: the person or organisation who made the import or export declaration for the imported goods is the debtor, which means they are liable for the customs debt.

HMRC distinguishes two kinds of representation. Under direct representation the representative acts in the principal's name, and the principal is solely liable for the customs debt; the agent becomes jointly and severally liable only where the principal gave clear instructions and the agent made a deliberate or unreasonable error. Under indirect representation the representative acts in their own name but on the principal's behalf. HMRC also warns that a representative who does not state the type of representation, or is not empowered to act as one, is acting on their own behalf.

The practical reading is that the declaration decides who customs is dealing with, so it also decides whose paperwork the import generates. Agree the type of representation in writing before the first shipment. HMRC says to keep written confirmation of what was agreed between agent and principal, and the cheapest moment to have that conversation is before anything sails.

The obstacle nobody mentions until the lorry is booked

The legal side is usually fine. The delivery is not. A full container arrives on an articulated lorry, the driver is not required to unload it, and a residential street with parked cars on both sides is not a delivery point. Twenty pallets need somewhere to go within the hours the vehicle is there.

The ordinary answers are a shared warehouse, a third-party logistics provider, delivery to a fulfilment centre, or shipping less than a container load so the forwarder breaks the consignment down and a smaller vehicle delivers it. Our guide on sea freight costs explains where that choice changes the arithmetic.

Here is the sentence that costs us work. If this is your first order and you have nowhere to put a pallet, the honest answer is often to order less than you were planning, not to find a way to store more. A smaller first order tests the supplier, the paperwork and the delivery for a fraction of the money, and it also means a smaller commission for anybody paid on order value. We would rather say it than watch a first container sit on a residential street.

The corollary is that you should get the EORI before you place the order rather than while the goods are afloat. Our first order checklist puts it early for that reason.