Selling to Germany through a distributor: what award notices show a Polish manufacturer

Germany is the obvious first export market for many manufacturers in Poland and the rest of Central Europe: a neighbour, and a very large public and private market. The question is how to sell there. You can deliver to German customers directly from your factory, open a branch or a company in Germany, or work through a German distributor, the specialist trade that Germans call Fachhandel.

Public contract award notices give an unusually clear answer to one part of that question: who German buyers actually buy from. This post shows what the notices say, how to read one, and what to do next.

Putting it simply: in German public supply contracts, almost every award goes to a company registered in Germany. Some of those are German distributors, some are the German subsidiaries of foreign groups. Very few go to companies registered abroad. If you want German public demand without building a German company first, the route is a German distributor that already wins in your category. Find it in the award notices, write to it by letter rather than by e-mail, and arrive with documents in German.

Three routes, and what each costs

Direct from Poland. Nothing in EU procurement law stops a Polish manufacturer from bidding in Germany. Directive 2014/24/EU requires contracting authorities to "treat economic operators equally and without discrimination" (Article 18). In practice, a German buyer expects bids, documents and service in German, and often installation, training and spare parts on site. A factory abroad has to organise all of that itself.

A branch or a German company. A branch (Zweigniederlassung) of a company seated abroad is registered with the German commercial register court in whose district the branch is located (§ 13d HGB). A German GmbH needs share capital of at least EUR 25,000 (§ 5 GmbHG). Both give you a German address. Neither gives you customers, a sales team or service engineers.

A German distributor. The distributor already has the customers, the German-speaking staff, the warehouse and often a place on buyers' framework agreements. You give up margin and some control over price. For a first market, it is a cheaper way to learn whether the product sells than building your own company. The Germany playbook explains how the Fachhandel and the buying groups (Verbundgruppen) are organised.

How German public buyers buy

Germany has no single national procurement portal. The federal government, the sixteen Länder and thousands of municipalities, hospitals and utilities each run their own procedures, on many platforms. Three federal addresses are good starting points:

• oeffentlichevergabe.de, the Publication Service (Bekanntmachungsservice) of the Datenservice Öffentlicher Einkauf, run by the federal Procurement Office (Beschaffungsamt des BMI). It describes itself as "the central portal for searching for notices of public contracting authorities from the Federal Government, the Länder and local authorities". It is free to use and has an open data interface.
• service.bund.de, the federal administration's portal. Notices reach it directly from public bodies or by automated import from 70 cooperating procurement platforms. Since October 2023, notices for EU-wide procedures are sent to the EU Publications Office in eForms format through the Datenservice Öffentlicher Einkauf.
• e-Vergabe (evergabe-online.de), the federal e-procurement platform run by the Procurement Office, where companies can download tender documents and submit bids electronically.

Federal bodies also order standard products from the Kaufhaus des Bundes, an electronic purchasing platform. Four central procurement offices pool the federal administration's demand and conclude framework agreements for standard products with companies, after a public award procedure. If your category is bought this way, the framework holder is a company worth knowing.

The EU thresholds

Above the EU thresholds, buyers must run an EU-wide procedure and publish the result, and the notice appears on TED, the EU's procurement journal. From 1 January 2026, Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2152 sets the thresholds of Directive 2014/24/EU at EUR 140,000 for supply and service contracts awarded by central government authorities (with exceptions, for example some defence supplies) and EUR 216,000 for those awarded by other (sub-central) contracting authorities, excluding VAT. Land authorities, municipalities and municipal hospitals are sub-central buyers, so the second figure applies to them. Below the thresholds, national and Land rules apply and notices are published on national platforms, not necessarily on TED.

Who wins: the numbers

Cresques analysed the TED contract award notices for supplies published between 2 November 2023 and 30 October 2026 (see our methodology). An "award" is one winner on one lot. The winner's country is the country of the company's registration as published in the notice.

For buyers in Germany, that gives 32,873 award notices, 71,918 awards and 13,415 distinct winning companies. 95.2% of the awards went to companies registered in Germany. Companies registered in Poland won 90 awards, spread across 32 companies.

Read that carefully. "Registered in Germany" includes the German subsidiaries of foreign groups: a German GmbH owned by a Polish, French or American parent counts as German. So the figure does not mean that German buyers only buy German products. It means they buy from companies established in Germany: a local distributor, or a manufacturer's own local sales company. For a manufacturer without a German company, that is the point. Your products reach German public buyers through someone registered there.

The categories are broad. These are the notice counts by CPV division in the same data (a notice can count in more than one division):

If your products fall into one of these divisions, there is a public record of the German companies that sell them.

How to read a German award notice

A German award notice on TED follows the eForms structure. Take a real example: notice 599807-2026, published on 1 September 2026 by a municipal hospital in Saxony-Anhalt for a PET/CT scanner and its software. It is officially available only in German; TED shows the field labels in English.

1. Search by country, notice type and category. In TED's search, the "Country" field is "where the buyer is based"; choose Germany, the result notices, and your CPV codes. The CPV guide helps you choose them.
2. Check what was bought. Section 2 gives the main classification (here "33115100 CT scanners") and the place of performance down to the district. Section 5 describes each lot, and whether a framework agreement is involved.
3. Find the winners in section 6. For each lot, "Information about winners" names the winner, the value of the tender, the date the winner was chosen and the date the contract was concluded. In the example, lot 1 (the scanner) went to a company registered in Germany, lot 2 (the software) to a company registered in Sweden.
4. Identify each company in section 8. "Organisations" lists every party with its official name, registration number, town, country and role, and for winners usually the company size. A German GmbH may show its commercial register entry (in the example, "HRB …") or its VAT number; "Winner of these lots" ties it to the result.
5. Ask whether the value is a price. On a framework agreement, the value is often the ceiling for the whole term, not sales. Our post on framework values explains how to tell.
6. Repeat across many notices. One award proves little. A company that wins your category for several buyers, year after year, is selling it. Then check what kind of company it is: an independent distributor, or a competitor's own subsidiary.

The full walkthrough is in how to read a TED contract award notice.

First contact: not by e-mail

This is where a manufacturer's usual first move, a short introductory e-mail, goes wrong. In Germany, § 7(2) no. 2 of the Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) treats advertising by e-mail "without the prior express consent of the addressee" (our translation of "ohne dass eine vorherige ausdrückliche Einwilligung des Adressaten vorliegt") as an unreasonable nuisance in every case. The rule makes no exception for business recipients. The only exception, § 7(3), covers existing customers whose address you obtained in connection with a sale, for your own similar goods, with a clear opt-out. A distributor you have never sold to is not an existing customer.

The consequence can be a lawyer's warning letter (Abmahnung), with a demand for costs, from the very company you wanted as a partner. Our guide why your first e-mail to a German distributor is unlawful covers the details. The Germany market page summarises the lawful channels:

• a short letter by post in German to the managing director, with a one-page product sheet and a concrete reason: "you won these contracts in our category";
• a stand or a visit at the sector's trade fair;
• an introduction through an association, a buying group or an existing partner.

A phone call to a business needs at least its presumed consent (§ 7(2) no. 1 UWG), so keep the phone for follow-up after a sign of interest. Once the distributor has replied and asked you to write, e-mail is fine. This is a summary, not legal advice; check your outreach plan with a lawyer if in doubt.

What a German distributor will ask for

Expect the documents before the price discussion. Some of what follows is law; the rest is common commercial practice.

• Conformity documents. For products under EU harmonisation legislation, the CE marking and the EU declaration of conformity. The reference provisions that most EU product laws copy require the declaration to be translated into the language or languages required by the Member State where the product is placed or made available on the market (Decision No 768/2008/EC, Annex I, Article R10).
• Instructions in German. For products covered by the Product Safety Act (ProdSG), such as machinery, low-voltage electrical equipment or toys (§ 1 ProdSG), where certain rules must be followed in use, supplementing or maintenance to protect people's safety and health, instructions for use in German must be supplied with the product (§ 3(4) ProdSG), unless an ordinance under § 8 ProdSG provides otherwise. For consumer products, the GPSR requires instructions and safety information in a language easily understood by consumers, as determined by the Member State (Article 9(7)).
• A responsible economic operator. Products under the GPSR, and many products under harmonisation legislation, may be placed on the EU market only if an economic operator established in the Union is responsible for them. A manufacturer established in the Union qualifies (Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, Article 4(2)(a), applied by Article 16 GPSR). A manufacturer in Poland therefore does not need a separate EU representative, unlike suppliers from outside the EU.
• Price lists and delivery terms. A price list in euro, minimum order quantities, lead times you can keep, and delivery terms stated as an Incoterms® 2020 rule, such as DAP or FCA. See Incoterms, payment terms and samples.
• Payment terms within the law. Where German law governs the contract, § 271a BGB applies: a payment period longer than 60 days is effective only if expressly agreed and not grossly unfair to the creditor.
• Technical data in German. Data sheets, product images and article data the distributor can load into its catalogue. The general checklist is in what a distributor expects from a new supplier.

Step by step

1. Choose your CPV codes. Pick the three to five codes that describe what you make, not your whole catalogue.
2. Pull the German award notices. Use TED for the last two or three years, and oeffentlichevergabe.de for national notices below the thresholds, where they are published.
3. List the winners. Count awards per company and note the buyers, the regions and the contract end dates.
4. Sort partners from competitors. Check each frequent winner's website and register entry. Remove manufacturers and their own subsidiaries; keep independent distributors.
5. Prepare the German pack. Declaration of conformity, instructions, data sheets and a price list in German, with delivery and payment terms.
6. Write a letter. Post it to the managing director, name the contracts the company won in your category, and say why your range fits. No cold e-mail.
7. Follow up at the trade fair or by phone once there is a sign of interest. Expect a trial order before a long-term listing.

Where Cresques fits

Cresques covers the TED part of steps 2 to 4. You create a market from a country and up to five CPV categories, and see the companies that won public supply contracts for them, each tied to the award notices behind it (the Free plan shows the first five companies of each market). Opening a full company profile (4 credits) shows each award with its buyer, amount and date, and what kind of company it is, researched from its own website with quotes checked on their pages: an independent distributor, a manufacturer, a manufacturer's subsidiary, or a company that does both. For Germany, the first message (1 credit) is drafted in German with an English version, for a letter, a contact form or LinkedIn rather than a cold e-mail; you send it yourself. Every new account gets 10 credits once, enough for one market map; see pricing.