Important information concerning the carriage of lithium batteries by air coming into effect on 1 January 2013

Laws regulating the carriage of lithium batteries by air are changing on the 1st of January 2013.

For MFN Sellers

If you are fulfilling orders containing lithium batteries yourself, please make sure that you:

 
• familiarise yourself with the applicable legal requirements, in particular, and the relevant national implementing laws,
 
• ensure that your products and product information are fully compliant with these requirements,
 
• collect the weight of the lithium batteries from all the products that you list and are or contain a lithium battery.

In order to comply with this regulatory change, you should do the following:

Determine if the applicable laws regulating the carriage of lithium batteries by air, in particular, apply to your product. This may inter alia be verified by contacting the manufacturer.

Additional information can be found in the 'Lithium Battery Guidance Document’ provided by the IATA.

Within the next weeks, you will get further guidance via this help page explaining how you will have to provide and how to provide the lithium battery weight as part of the product listing via our updated seller tools.

For AFN or FBA Sellers

If you are using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) to fulfil your orders containing lithium batteries, it is very important that you closely adhere to the following instructions to ensure that your shipments can be processed smoothly as of 1 January 2013. This applies to both existing inventory in Amazon’s fulfilment centres and to any new shipments you will send to an Amazon Fulfilment Centre in the future.

As of 1 January 2013 for all outbound shipments processed by Amazon, the lithium battery weight of each package will be taken into account.

For standalone lithium batteries destined for use in articles such as cameras and laptops, the acceptable battery weight threshold will be 2.5 kg. For products where the lithium battery is built into the product or packed next to the product, the acceptable battery weight threshold will be set at 5 kg.

For Amazon to be able to process outbound shipments as of 1/1/2013, the Amazon catalogue will need to be updated on ASIN level to include the battery quantity and weight. If in doubt, we recommend that you contact the manufacturer to obtain the exact information. In cases where this information is missing so has not been updated, the weight of the whole package will be taken into account. If the total package weight exceeds the 2.5 kg or 5 kg thresholds outlined above, Amazon will not be able to ship your order.

To avoid such cases, please download this excel sheet which we kindly request you to complete and return to fba-lithium-ion@amazon.lu by the 19th of December 2012. We will then upload the data to the Amazon catalogue on your behalf. Before year end we will provide you with a new flat file which you can complete and upload to update any remaining or new listings which contain lithium batteries.

Should you have any questions, our seller support team is standing by to help and can be reached via the contact us button in your seller account. We thank you for your comprehension and prompt cooperation to ensure that your listings are updated accordingly by the end of 2012.