What does brand owner mean?
Brand owner is the NSW regulated-battery actor term that can route stewardship responsibility to the actor responsible for supply into the State, not automatically to the company whose brand appears on the product.
brand owner
An NSW regulated-battery actor term that can include the person responsible for bringing a regulated battery into the State for supply.
1 official sourceSingle-source term
Source context
This page is New South Wales-specific. The source text modifies the Act’s brand-owner logic for regulated batteries and should not be generalized into a global brand-owner definition for every battery, EPR, or product-stewardship regime.
Official definitions by source
NSW PLR Regulation
Product Lifecycle Responsibility Regulation 2026 (NSW)
For the Act, section 6(1)(b), a brand owner of a regulated battery includes the person responsible for bringing the regulated battery into the State for supply. For the Act, section 6(4)(b), the owner of the product name under which a regulated battery is supplied in the State is not the brand owner of the regulated battery if— (a) the owner of the product name does not supply the regulated battery in the State, and (b) another person is responsible for bringing the regulated battery into the State for supply. To avoid doubt, a person who only transports, including related warehousing, a regulated battery for another person does not bring the regulated battery into the State for supply.
NSW state-level regulated-battery product-stewardship source; not a national Australian battery-passport regime.
Reference: section 9
Practical application
Implementation records should capture the actor identifier, supply-into-NSW evidence, regulated-battery type, brand or product-name link, transport-only exclusion, PSO relationship, and stewardship obligation so responsibility is not assigned from packaging labels alone.
Minespider commentary
Brand owner is an NSW actor-resolution control: the evidence consequence is that product-name ownership, import or entry responsibility, supply responsibility, and logistics roles can be separated before scheme obligations are assigned.
Common confusions
- Assuming the visible brand name always identifies the responsible actor.
- Treating a transport-only actor as the brand owner without checking the NSW exclusion.
- Using the NSW battery-specific brand-owner rule as a global EPR definition.