Amazon requires transparent packaging! ? The truth is out

Yesterday, Amazon updated an announcement stating that after August 5, all products with non-transparent or solid-color bags in Amazon stores will be removed from the shelves.

Amazon stated in the announcement that starting from August 5, 2022, there will not be any remaining inventory of opaque or solid-color polyester film bags in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and the ASINs of these products will be removed from the Amazon store. Sellers must create a removal order within 30 days of receiving this notice to send the remaining inventory to the seller's designated return location.

This quickly sparked discussion in our seller group. Everyone believed that the announcement might prohibit sellers from using non-transparent or solid-color plastic bags as outer packaging for their products, and they asked how to deal with it and whether their products would be returned.

Some sellers received news that only individual categories needed to meet the transparent packaging requirements, while other sellers opened a case and consulted customer service, and the reply they received was that the affected scope extended to all products.

This has a huge impact. There are still many sellers whose products do not use transparent or single-color packaging bags. The cost of handling these products stored in overseas FBA warehouses is really huge.

However, we consulted some internal channels and found other explanations for the content of this announcement.

This is actually an announcement similar to the UK's plastic ban . It is not ordinary products with plastic packaging that are banned from sale and removed from shelves, but only products with plastic bags . When the UK's plastic ban banned the sale of plastic bags and plastic straws, many sellers mistakenly thought that it was the packaging bags that were banned. In fact, ordinary products that normally use plastic packaging bags were not affected.

This statement has also been verified by more reliable sources. Some of our cross-border sellers have verified with internal channels and reached the same conclusion that this policy is not aimed at product packaging.

In fact, as can be seen from the title of the announcement, what is prohibited is "mylar bag listing", which refers specifically to products in plastic bags, so sellers who use non-transparent packaging bags do not need to be nervous about this announcement.

Currently, Amazon’s requirements for packaging bags are relatively loose. The most important thing about plastic packaging is to pay attention to the suffocation warning: use plastic bags with openings greater than or equal to 5 inches as outer packaging. Sellers need to print suffocation warnings on the outer packaging or affix them as labels.