EU Friends, We Need to Talk: Why We’ve Paused Shipping to Europe
By Fernando Santos
From 12 August 2026 we have stopped posting physical orders to EU countries. Wool, kits, needles and finished cardigans are all paused. Digital patterns and memberships are completely unaffected and still reach every EU country instantly, exactly as they always have. Here is the whole reason, with the real numbers.
First, we agree with the principle
The EU’s new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation is now starting to apply, and I want to be straight about where I stand before I complain about any of it.
Sustainability matters to Gigante Knits. It is why we work mostly with natural fibres, and why we use recyclable packaging wherever we can. Less waste, better recycling, more responsibility for what we put into the world? Absolutely.
The problem is not the principle. The problem is what complying with it looks like for a business this small.
What compliance actually means for us
When I send you wool or a cardigan, I am also sending packaging. A box, a label, paper, tape. Selling into EU countries now means registering that packaging, reporting on it, meeting extended producer responsibility requirements and paying the fees that come with them. Because we sit outside the EU, it also means appointing and paying someone inside each country to carry those obligations on our behalf. That sits on top of the earlier GPSR product-safety rules, which already ask for a named responsible person inside the EU.
And those costs are significant.
None of it is a one-off, either. It is a standing yearly cost per country, due whether we post a hundred parcels that year or none at all.
It is not the parcel that costs us. It is the permission to send it.
One kit, one parcel, twenty-seven sets of paperwork
Rather than talk in the abstract, here is our most ordinary order: a Regular fit chunky cardigan kit in size S, going to an address somewhere in the EU.
| One EU order | What it involves |
|---|---|
| The order | Regular fit cardigan kit, size S |
| What you pay | £119 for the kit, plus £18 postage |
| What goes in the box | 11 portions of Corriedale wool, about 2.9 kg once packed |
| Needed before it can travel | Packaging registration and reporting in the destination country, a paid representative in that country, and a responsible person inside the EU |
| Countries that repeats across | 27 |
| How often the fees fall due | Every year, parcels or no parcels |
| EU orders we have had | A handful |
Put a standing yearly cost against a handful of orders and the sum stops working. At Gigante’s current size and order volume, sending an order to the EU can genuinely cost us more than we make from the sale.
So this is not just extra admin. Right now, some EU orders would mean selling at a loss and calling it growth.
This is where scale decides everything
A very large company spreads the same compliance across millions of orders, and it vanishes into a rounding error on a page nobody reads. A tiny independent business spreads it across a handful. Same rules, completely different arithmetic.
There are provisions intended to reduce the burden on smaller producers, and I have read them properly rather than skimmed them. Being small does not automatically make the requirements disappear.
So I am pausing, rather than pretending
For now I am pausing physical EU orders while I work out a sustainable way forward.
I would rather pause than quietly load those costs onto your basket, and I would rather pause than keep sending orders that lose the business money on their way out of the door. The third option, posting parcels and hoping nobody checks the paperwork, was never an option.
I would rather tell you why than quietly put the prices up.
What still works, everywhere
If you are reading this from an EU address, almost everything we do still reaches you.
Every pattern is digital. Patterns and memberships are downloads, not parcels, so nothing about this touches them. They arrive instantly, in every country, as always.
The Design Studio is unchanged. You can still design your own cardigan, in your own colours, and get the full pattern for it.
The Sovereign is still free. The first cardigan I ever made, yours at no cost, wherever you are.
The rest of the world is unaffected. The UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and everywhere else carry on exactly as before. Full details on the shipping page.
What happens next
If enough of you in the EU want our wool, I will register country by country and come back, starting with wherever the demand actually is.
So tell me. Email info@giganteknits.com with the country you are in and what you were hoping to order. That is genuinely how I will decide where to start, and I will update you here as soon as I have something concrete.
Thank you for understanding, and for supporting small. 🫒
Sources: European Commission guidance and FAQs on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation; Regulation (EU) 2025/40.
Keep reading
The Sovereign: The Cardigan I Made in My Hardest Year, Now Free
The first cardigan I ever made, and the piece that started Gigante Knits. Yours at no cost, wherever you are.
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