CBAM and Logistics Companies 2026: How Carbon Border Adjustment Affects Supply Chains

IgeraRegTech · CBAM / Carbon Border

By Equip Igera · 20 June 2026 · 12 min read

Logistics providers are not the importer of record under CBAM — but they are becoming the critical bottleneck for carbon data that their clients urgently need. Since 1 October 2023, the transitional phase of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 has been in force. From 1 January 2026, the definitive regime applies: importers of steel, cement, aluminium, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity must surrender CBAM certificates or face fines up to three times the certificate price. None of that works without embedded carbon data that only the logistics and freight chain can systematically collect.

CBAM at a glance for logistics: Legal basis: Regulation (EU) 2023/956, Articles 3–11 (scope) and Articles 17–27 (obligations) Transitional phase: 1 Oct 2023 – 31 Dec 2025 (reporting only, no certificate purchase) Definitive phase: From 1 Jan 2026 (certificate purchase mandatory) Logistics role: Indirect — must provide Bill of Lading data, CN codes, production country and embedded carbon certificates from non-EU producers Risk: Clients can cancel freight contracts if CBAM data is missing at customs clearance

What CBAM actually is — and what it is not

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is a carbon pricing tool grafted onto EU customs law. Its purpose is simple: if a tonne of steel produced outside the EU emits carbon that would carry a cost under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) if produced inside the EU, then the importer pays the equivalent charge at the border.

What CBAM is not is a tariff or a trade restriction in the traditional sense. It does not discriminate by country of origin per se — it discriminates by embedded carbon intensity . A Turkish steel mill with verified low-carbon processes can qualify for a reduced certificate obligation. A German-owned facility outside the EU is not exempt just because the parent is European.

For logistics companies, the crucial legal distinction sits in Article 3(1) of Regulation (EU) 2023/956, which defines the "authorised CBAM declarant" as the importer — not the freight forwarder, not the 3PL, not the shipping line. Yet Article 35 creates an indirect obligation by requiring the declarant to use actual embedded emission values from the producer, communicated through what the regulation calls "the default values" structure. Those actual values can only come through the logistics and customs chain.

The four CBAM sectors that dominate freight volumes

Six product categories are in scope under Annex I of the Regulation. Four of them account for the bulk of bulk and break-bulk freight moving into the EU:

Sector CN Codes (examples) EU imports 2024 (€bn) Avg. embedded CO₂ (t/t product) Steel & iron 7206–7229, 7301–7307 €38.4bn 1.85 t CO₂e/t Cement & clinker 2523, 6810 €2.1bn 0.83 t CO₂e/t Aluminium 7601–7616 (selected) €12.7bn 11.5 t CO₂e/t (primary) Fertilisers (nitrogen-based) 3102, 3105 (N compounds) €5.9bn 1.6–4.2 t CO₂e/t

Sources: Eurostat Comext, 2024 trade data; IPCC default emission factors; JRC CBAM background report 2022.

The liability chain: who is responsible for what

CBAM creates a tiered obligation chain that logistics companies must understand precisely — because being at the wrong tier when a declaration is challenged can trigger contractual liability even when CBAM itself does not directly penalise the freight provider.

CBAM OBLIGATION CASCADE

Level 1 — Non-EU Producer Must calculate and communicate actual embedded emissions per tonne of goods produced, using the methodology in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773 (Annex III). Provides a "producer declaration" with installation ID, production route, fuel mix and emission factor.

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Level 2 — Freight Forwarder / 3PL / Customs Agent No direct CBAM legal obligation but must collect, verify and transmit : (a) producer declarations, (b) correct CN codes at 8-digit level, (c) net weight by product type, (d) country of origin with production facility address. Errors here invalidate the importer's CBAM declaration under Article 6(2)(d).

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Level 3 — EU Authorised CBAM Declarant (Importer) Registered in the CBAM Registry. Files annual CBAM declaration by 31 May (Article 6). Surrenders CBAM certificates equal to verified embedded emissions. Faces penalties of €10–€50 per tonne of CO₂ under Article 26 if no valid declaration, plus reputational risk from CBAM Registry publication.

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Level 4 — National Competent Authority (e.g., HMRC, AEAT, German Customs) Verifies declarations, audits CBAM registries and can impose Article 26 penalties. In the UK, CBAM entered into force on 1 January 2027 under the UK CBAM (Finance Act 2024, Section 30 and Schedules 11–12), so cross-border flows between EU and UK face dual compliance.

The practical implication: a 3PL that fails to collect producer declarations loses a client's ability to use actual emission values, forcing fallback to default values that are deliberately set high (typically 30–40% above average sector emissions) to incentivise primary data collection. That cost difference gets passed back to the 3PL via service-level penalty clauses increasingly inserted into logistics contracts.

Documents logistics providers must collect from suppliers

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773, Article 4, specifies the minimum content of embedded emission communications. Every freight forwarder handling CBAM goods needs a structured document collection process. The seven documents below are the practical minimum:

Producer Declaration of Embedded Emissions (PDEE) Signed by the non-EU installation operator. Must include: installation identifier (national or CBAM Registry ID once available), reporting period, production route code (e.g., "BF-BOF" for blast furnace steel), direct and indirect embedded emissions in t CO₂e per tonne of goods, and the carbon price already paid in the country of origin (for deduction under Article 9).

Commercial Invoice with CN Code Declaration The invoice must specify the 8-digit Combined Nomenclature code for each line item. Generic descriptions ("steel bars") are insufficient — the freight agent must verify the code matches the goods at loading, not just the buyer's purchase order.

Bill of Lading / Air Waybill with Production Facility Address Country of origin at production level, not country of export. A steel coil produced in Ukraine but exported from Poland is a Ukrainian-origin CBAM good. The transport document must identify the mill, not the trading intermediary.

Third-Party Verification Certificate (where available) From 1 January 2026, Article 10 of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 requires accredited verifier sign-off on emission values declared using actual data. The accreditation must be by a body certified under ISO 14065 or equivalent national scheme.

Carbon Price Proof (for Article 9 deductions) If the producing country has a carbon pricing instrument (e.g., UK ETS, Swiss ETS, certain Chinese ETS schemes), the importer can deduct the equivalent carbon price from CBAM certificate requirements. The 3PL must collect official carbon price documentation issued by the producing country's regulator.

Packing List with Net Weight by CN Code Line CBAM certificates are calculated per tonne of embedded CO₂, which in turn is calculated per tonne of physical goods. Mixed-product shipments require weight breakdown by CN code, not a single gross weight figure.

Subcontractor / Precursor Emission Data (for complex goods) Steel pipes, aluminium profiles and fertiliser precursors often contain embedded carbon from upstream subprocesses. Annex III of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773 specifies how to aggregate precursor embedded emissions. This data must come from upstream suppliers in the non-EU country.

Retention requirement: Article 6(3) of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 requires declarants to retain CBAM-related records for five years after the annual declaration. As a 3PL, your service agreement should specify that you retain a copy of all CBAM documents collected for the same period, since your client may face an audit and need documentary evidence you provided.

Three case studies: what logistics companies actually faced

CASE STUDY 1 — German 3PL: DB Schenker-style operator, Hamburg-Rotterdam corridor A major German third-party logistics provider handling approximately 1.2 million tonnes of steel coils per year on behalf of automotive OEM clients faced the following challenge during Q4 2025: 37% of its steel shipments originated from producers who could not provide compliant PDEEs by the October 2025 deadline it had promised clients.

The root cause was structural: the 3PL's freight contracts were written under Incoterms 2020 CIF terms, meaning the non-EU seller (not the 3PL) arranged freight and insurance. The 3PL had no direct contractual relationship with the mills that needed to produce the PDEE. When it tried to insert a CBAM addendum into 118 supplier contracts in autumn 2025, 41 mills in India, Turkey and Indonesia refused or failed to respond within the commercial timeline.

Outcome: the 3PL negotiated a six-month fallback agreement with its top 10 clients allowing use of default emission values (published in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773, Annex VIII) for the Q1 2026 declarations. The cost differential between default and actual values for the affected steel volume was estimated at €4.2 million in additional CBAM certificates — which the 3PL absorbed 30% of under contractual penalty clauses.

Lesson: Incoterms affect your CBAM data exposure. CIF and CFR terms cut you off from the mill. Switch to DAP/DDP or FOB with an explicit CBAM data clause before the next contract renewal cycle.

CASE STUDY 2 — UK Freight Forwarder: dual EU/UK CBAM compliance A mid-sized UK freight forwarder based in Birmingham — approximately 85 employees, specialising in aluminium and copper shipments from Southeast Asia — found itself caught between two regulatory clocks during 2025–2026.

The EU CBAM's definitive phase started on 1 January 2026, affecting shipments it cleared through Rotterdam and Antwerp on behalf of EU-based clients. The UK's own CBAM (Schedule 12 to the Finance Act 2024) enters into force on 1 January 2027 for shipments cleared through Felixstowe and Southampton. The forwarder's operations team initially believed they had an extra year for UK compliance — but discovered that aluminium wire and profiles they were shipping from Malaysia into both the EU and the UK shared the same upstream production data , meaning the PDEE collection process had to be built anyway, immediately.

The forwarder hired one part-time regulatory compliance officer at a cost of £38,000 per annum and invested £12,500 in a CBAM data management platform to digitise PDEE collection from 23 Malaysian and Vietnamese producers. By March 2026, it had actual emission data for 89% of its aluminium volumes, against a UK industry average of approximately 61% (per British International Freight Association survey, Q1 2026).

Lesson: If you operate across both EU and UK, build your data collection infrastructure once. The two CBaMs use materially similar methodologies (both reference the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064-1). A single producer questionnaire with minor jurisdictional variants covers both.

CASE STUDY 3 — Spanish Distributor: cement and construction products A Valencia-based construction materials distributor imported approximately 48,000 tonnes of clinker and Portland cement per year from Morocco and Algeria under a long-standing supply arrangement. For the first transitional-phase quarterly CBAM report filed in January 2024, it used default values and faced no immediate penalty.

When the definitive phase began in January 2026, Spanish customs (the Agencia Tributaria, acting as the national competent authority for CBAM under Spain's implementation of the Regulation) flagged the account during a routine audit in February 2026. The issue: the distributor had filed its 2025 CBAM declaration — the last one under the transitional regime — using default values for Algerian cement, which are set at 0.998 t CO₂e/t (Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773, Annex VIII, Table 3). The Algerian producer had actually operated a modern dry-process kiln with verified emissions of 0.73 t CO₂e/t, a 27% difference representing approximately 12,000 CBAM certificates at the then-ETS price of €68/tonne — a potential €816,000 overcost on the 2025 declaration alone.

By retroactively supplying verified emission data (permitted under Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation during the transitional phase), the distributor recovered the overcost and built a standardised data exchange protocol with its Algerian and Moroccan suppliers for the definitive phase.

Lesson: Default values are not just a compliance fallback — they are a cost penalty. Even where no fine applies, using defaults on high-volume, low-emission goods destroys margin. The data collection effort almost always pays for itself.

Building a CBAM data process: eight steps for logistics companies

There is no single "CBAM data management" software that solves the whole problem. The process requires a combination of contract management, supplier engagement and data validation. Here is a structured approach that reflects what compliant forwarders have built in practice:

1 Screen your commodity portfolio by CN code Pull all import declarations from the past 12 months and filter by the Annex I CN codes of Regulation (EU) 2023/956. Identify the top 20 suppliers by volume in those codes — that is your minimum CBAM data collection universe.

2 Insert CBAM data clauses into logistics contracts Before the next contract renewal, add a clause requiring the shipper to provide compliant PDEE data no later than 30 days before the shipment's estimated arrival at the EU port of entry. Include a force majeure carve-out for verifier unavailability, and specify the default-value fallback cost allocation.

3 Create a standardised PDEE questionnaire for producers Map the fields from Annex III of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773 into a bilingual (English + local language) PDF or web form. Key fields: installation name and address, production route code, reporting year, direct/indirect emissions per tonne, fuel mix, electricity source mix, carbon price paid.

4 Validate CN codes at shipment booking stage Do not rely on the shipper's stated HS code. Add a CN code validation step to your booking workflow using your customs classification software. A single digit error (e.g., 7208 vs 7209 for flat-rolled steel) changes the CBAM obligation and the applicable default value.

5 Build a CBAM document repository with shipment linkage Link each PDEE to the corresponding MRN (Master Reference Number) from the customs entry. When your client files their CBAM declaration in the CBAM Registry, they will need to cite the specific import declarations to which each PDEE applies. Your repository must support that traceability.

6 Engage accredited verifiers for your key producers From 1 January 2026, actual emission values require third-party verification under Article 10. Identify which of your top producers already have ISO 14065-accredited verifier relationships. For those that do not, share a list of verifiers active in their country (EMAS accreditation bodies and SAS/DAkkS-accredited bodies cover most EU-exporting countries).

7 Run a quarterly reconciliation before the May 31 deadline Your importer clients must file their CBAM annual declaration by 31 May each year (Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2023/956). Run a reconciliation in April to identify any shipments from the prior year where PDEE data is missing or deficient. This gives enough time to request supplements or accept default value treatment.

8 Prepare for CBAM scope expansion to 2027–2030 The European Commission is mandated under Article 30 to review CBAM scope by 2025, with a likely expansion to additional ETS sectors (chemicals, plastics, indirect electricity emissions for all sectors, road transport) by 2030. Any data infrastructure you build now should be extensible to new CN code ranges without full redesign.

Frequently asked questions

Are freight forwarders legally liable if CBAM data is wrong? ▼ Under Regulation (EU) 2023/956, direct CBAM liability rests with the authorised declarant (the importer). However, freight forwarders and customs agents can face contractual liability under their service agreements if they fail to collect or transmit required documentation, causing the importer to use default values or miss the declaration deadline. In some member states (including Germany under §§ 150–159 of the Zollverwaltungsgesetz and its CBAM national implementing decree), customs agents can also face administrative liability for knowingly submitting false CN code declarations. Make sure your E&O insurance policy explicitly covers CBAM-related data errors — most standard freight forwarder policies written before 2024 do not.

Do goods transiting the EU (not entering free circulation) trigger CBAM? ▼ No. Article 2(1) of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 defines the CBAM obligation as arising when goods are "released for free circulation" in the EU customs territory under Union Customs Code procedures. Goods under customs transit (T1/T2 procedures), temporary admission, customs warehousing, or inward processing relief do not trigger CBAM at the point of entry. However, when those goods are subsequently released for free circulation, the CBAM obligation arises at that point. A common error is believing that goods placed in a bonded warehouse indefinitely avoid CBAM — they do not; the obligation is deferred, not eliminated.

What happens if a non-EU producer refuses to provide PDEE data? ▼ The importer must fall back to default values from Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773, Annex VIII. These defaults are deliberately punitive — set at roughly the 90th percentile of EU ETS-covered sector emissions. For example, the default for basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steel is 2.5 t CO₂e/t versus actual values typically in the 1.6–2.0 range, meaning the importer pays 25–56% more in CBAM certificates than necessary. From a logistics perspective, this situation is increasingly triggering sourcing switches: automotive OEMs are actively replacing suppliers unable to provide PDEE data with verified-low-carbon alternatives, many from within the EU or from countries with mutual recognition agreements under Article 8 of the Regulation (currently under negotiation with Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Ukraine).

How does CBAM interact with existing preferential trade agreements? ▼ CBAM applies regardless of preferential tariff rates or free trade agreements. A product from Morocco that enters the EU at 0% customs duty under the EU-Morocco Association Agreement still triggers CBAM if it falls under an Annex I CN code. The CBAM charge is not a tariff but a carbon price equivalence mechanism, so it operates on a separate legal basis from customs duty rates. Countries exempted from CBAM are limited under Article 2(12) to those that are part of the EU ETS or have "linked" their carbon pricing to the EU ETS at equivalent levels — currently only Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. All other countries, including current FTA partners such as Canada, Japan, South Korea and Mexico, are in full CBAM scope.

Can a 3PL become an authorised CBAM declarant on behalf of clients? ▼ Yes — but this is a significant strategic and liability decision. Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 allows an EU-established representative to act as authorised CBAM declarant with the importer's explicit written mandate. If your 3PL decides to offer this as a value-added service, it becomes responsible for filing the CBAM declaration and surrendering certificates — and faces Article 26 penalties directly if declarations are incorrect. Several major EU 3PLs (including DSV, Kuehne+Nagel and DHL Global Forwarding) have launched "CBAM-managed service" offerings that include customs agent CBAM declarant functions, but they have also updated their liability terms to cap CBAM-related damages at the annual logistics contract value, not the full certificate exposure. Consider this model only if you have the compliance infrastructure and indemnity structures already in place.

IgeraRegTech — CBAM Compliance Module Ask any CBAM question and get the exact Article, Annex and a structured compliance answer — covering Regulation (EU) 2023/956, Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773, UK CBAM (Finance Act 2024) and the Commission's default value tables. Built for logistics legal, trade compliance and customs teams.

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Legal references: Regulation (EU) 2023/956 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 establishing a carbon border adjustment mechanism (OJ L 130, 16.5.2023, p. 52) · Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773 of 17 August 2023 laying down the rules for the application of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 (OJ L 228, 15.9.2023, p. 1) · Finance Act 2024 (UK), Schedule 12 (UK CBAM) · Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/[forthcoming] on CBAM Registry · Eurostat Comext, 2024 EU import trade data · British International Freight Association (BIFA), CBAM Readiness Survey Q1 2026 · JRC Technical Report "Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism: Implications for International Trade" (2022) · GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard · ISO 14064-1:2018 (Quantification and reporting of GHG emissions) · ISO 14065:2020 (GHG validation and verification bodies).

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