Sourcing EV chargers from China for UK operators

The duty is low, so the saving is the reseller's margin

Most of what a UK operator pays for a charger bought through a reseller is not duty. A DC charger converts mains alternating current into the direct current the car's battery takes, and a unit that charges a battery that way sits under the tariff's heading for static converters, as an accumulator charger. Read from the UK Trade Tariff on 25 September 2026, that code carries 0% duty on goods from China, with no anti-dumping measure against it.

An AC unit is a different product: it passes alternating current to the car, whose own on-board charger does the conversion. Without a converter inside, an AC charge point is often classed as a control board rather than a charger, and that code carries 2%. Classification turns on what the unit actually contains, so confirm the commodity code for the exact model before you rely on a rate. Our duty calculator turns the code into a landed figure.

What a public charger has to do under UK law

The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 came into force on 24 November 2023, and they decide much of the specification you send a factory. A rapid charge point is defined as a public charge point with a power of 50 kilowatts or above. The operator must make the network of rapid charge points, on average, reliable for 99% of the time in each calendar year, judged from the status each charge point reports.

Public charge points of 8 kilowatts or above must let a driver pay by contactless card without an existing contract with the operator, and the total price must be displayed in pence per kilowatt hour. The regulations also require payment roaming, open charge point data and a helpline. None of that is the factory's legal duty, but all of it has to be possible with the hardware you buy: a payment terminal the unit can host, status reporting a back office can read, and firmware the factory will keep updating.

That is why a public-network order is a support decision as much as a price decision. Ask how the unit reports its status, which back-office protocol and version it speaks, how firmware updates are delivered, and which spare parts the factory holds and for how long. A charger that is cheap to buy but slow to repair works directly against the 99% the law measures you on.

Home and workplace units, and the electrical safety rules

Chargers sold for homes and workplaces fall under the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 instead. They apply to charge points intended for charging cars, vans or both, and exclude public charge points and rapid ones of 50 kilowatts or more. Schedule 1 sets the security requirements: no default passwords shared across units, encrypted communications, protection against tampering, a security log and a stated period of software updates.

Both kinds are electrical equipment under the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 2016, which apply to equipment designed for 50 to 1,000 volts alternating current or 75 to 1,500 volts direct current, so a charger needs the conformity marking and the technical file behind it. The CE and UKCA guide sets out who holds what. The general standard for EV supply equipment is IEC 61851-1, which covers charging equipment for rated supply voltages up to 1,000 volts alternating current or 1,500 volts direct current.

Ask for the test report, not a certificate on its own, and check that it names the exact model and power rating you are buying, the laboratory that did the testing and the standard edition. A report for a 60 kilowatt unit does not cover the 120 kilowatt version of the same cabinet.

How we chose the factory for a UK charging operator

For a UK electric charging operator in 2025, equipment bought through UK resellers was limiting how fast it could expand, and it needed a factory whose qualifications met its UK requirements. We visited a candidate factory in Jiangsu and ruled it out because its qualifications did not meet those requirements. We then found a factory in Zhejiang, worked through the requirements with them and reviewed a third-party check before a formal order was placed, with technical verification of the components throughout.

The result was a 70% reduction in unit cost, which let the operator undercut competitors and scale 3× faster, and the Zhejiang factory is now a long-term supplier. The full account is on the case studies page.

The pattern generalises. Visit before you order, rule factories out on documents as readily as on price, and have the factory audit and a third-party check done before the first formal order, not after the first failure. On a container of heavy cabinets, a container loading check and a pre-shipment inspection protect the order at the last point where fixing it is cheap. Cambridge China Bridge runs that sequence for operators, with our own staff in China visiting the factories. See how our sourcing service works.