Selling into Bulgaria through distributors

How the market buys

Bulgarian public purchasing is carried out by ministries and state agencies, regional administrations, municipalities, state and municipal hospitals, universities and public utilities. They buy separately, but procedures and notices run through national electronic systems, in Bulgarian.

The working platform is CAIS EOP (ЦАИС ЕОП), the electronic public procurement platform at app.eop.bg, on which current procedures are published. The Public Procurement Agency (Агенция по обществени поръчки, АОП) runs the procurement portal at aop.bg, which also keeps the register of procurements opened before CAIS EOP and lists the notices and contracts published on the previous day. Between them, the two cover both current procedures and the older record.

Bulgarian buyers usually award to companies that can bid in Bulgarian, invoice locally and deliver and service within the country. In our analysis of TED award notices for supplies (September 2026), 99% of the winners in the 6,053 notices from buyers in Bulgaria were companies registered in the country (96% across the 30 EU and EEA countries); those local winners include distributors and dealers as well as manufacturers' own local subsidiaries — see our methodology. A foreign manufacturer enters by being listed with them.

Lawful first contact

Bulgaria handles business e-mail differently from most of its neighbours: through a public opt-out register for companies. The Commission for Consumer Protection (Комисия за защита на потребителите, KZP), which deals with spam sent by e-mail, keeps a register of the electronic addresses of legal persons that do not wish to receive unsolicited commercial messages. A company's representative can enter the company together with a list of its e-mail addresses and domains; from the date of registration they form part of the register. KZP offers a public form to check addresses against the register, up to 100,000 per request.

For individuals the position is stricter. When someone complains to KZP about spam, they must declare that the address is used for personal needs, and KZP's consumer guidance notes that a trader may send advertising to a person who gave contact details during an online purchase.

The legal basis is article 6 of the Electronic Commerce Act (Закон за електронната търговия), in the consolidated text published by KZP. An unsolicited commercial e-mail sent without the recipient's prior consent must be recognisable as unsolicited as soon as it arrives; KZP keeps the electronic register of legal persons' addresses; sending to an address in the register is prohibited; and so is sending unsolicited commercial messages to consumers without their prior consent. We describe Bulgaria as conditional for two reasons. First, a first e-mail to a company is lawful only after you have checked its address against the register. Second, it is not settled in the sources we checked whether a named employee's address at a company counts as the company's address or as a personal one. A practical, cautious approach: check every address against the KZP register before sending; write only to generic addresses the company publishes, such as office@ or sales@; make the message recognisable as unsolicited commercial communication from the moment it arrives; identify your company fully; offer a free way to opt out and honour it immediately; and do not write to a named person's mailbox without consent. A letter, a trade fair or an introduction remains the safest first step.

What local distributors expect

Bulgarian distributors expect a supplier who makes tenders easy to win:

• Bulgarian-language documentation: technical sheets, instructions and declarations ready to upload with a bid.
• Conformity evidence for the category — CE marking, declarations of conformity, test reports — and any national registrations the product needs.
• Competitive pricing with a clear distributor margin, so that the distributor can win a tender on price and still earn on it.
• Delivery you can keep, stock within reach and spare parts for the life of the contract.
• Payment terms that recognise the time public buyers may take to pay.
• A defined territory, a clear position on exclusivity, and direct contact with someone who can make decisions.

How to enter, step by step

1. Find who already wins your category. In TED's advanced search, set the buyer country to Bulgaria, the notice type to results and add your CPV codes; the companies named in the award notices are your shortlist. Cresques runs this search for the CPV categories you choose.
2. Check the national record. Current procedures are on CAIS EOP (app.eop.bg); the AOP portal at aop.bg keeps the register of procurements opened before CAIS EOP and lists the notices and contracts published the previous day. As of October 2026 we could not confirm from an official source which central purchasing bodies buy for Bulgarian administrations or how they admit suppliers, so take the buyer named on each award notice as your guide.
3. Prepare Bulgarian documentation. Technical sheets, instructions and declarations in Bulgarian, ready for a distributor to upload with a bid.
4. Assemble conformity evidence. CE marking, declarations of conformity and test reports for the category, plus any national registrations the product needs.
5. Check every address against the KZP register. Before any e-mail, run the addresses through the Commission for Consumer Protection's public check, which takes up to 100,000 addresses per request.
6. Make the first contact cautiously. A letter, a trade fair or an introduction is the safest first step. If you e-mail, write only to a generic address the company publishes, such as office@ or sales@, identify your company fully and offer a free way to opt out; do not write to a named person's mailbox without consent.
7. Prepare the first meeting. Bring pricing with a clear distributor margin, delivery you can keep, stock within reach and spare parts for the life of a contract, payment terms that allow for slow public payers, and a territory and exclusivity proposal — and send someone who can make decisions.
8. Follow up and recheck. Honour any opt-out immediately. A company's addresses join the KZP register from the date it registers them, so check again before each later mailing.

Where the evidence comes from

Above the EU thresholds — EUR 140,000 for supplies and services bought by central government bodies and EUR 216,000 for other public authorities from 1 January 2026 — Bulgarian buyers must publish contract award notices, and those notices appear on TED, the online supplement to the Official Journal of the EU. Each notice names the winning company and carries CPV codes, so the distributors that repeatedly win, for example, medical supplies or municipal equipment contracts across Bulgaria can be identified from the public record. National procedures are published on CAIS EOP.

Cresques reads the award notices for the CPV categories you choose and shows who already sells that category in Bulgaria. It does not help you bid for the contracts; the notices are evidence of who the buyers already trust, and the cautious first contact above is how you reach them.