Leaders for cover tapes - required when not purchasing a full reel of parts, and for fixing broken cover tapes (very common)
may be purchased at www.tapesplice.com (for US customers)

I have no relationship with them - I just like their leaders, which are required for use with the smallSMT machine at least in my book.
EU and Asia likely have similar versions of these supplies - but I have no knowledge.

One box has 500 pieces I think and lasts us more than a year but of course it will depend on your use.

They also have splices for joining the end of one reel to another. I have tried the tape variety and they were kind of hit or miss going though the feeder
One jammed and made a mess and the other one went right through. It might have worked better if I had just blown off the parts, and pulled the splice through.

There are higher quality metal splices that work well (our suppliers use them) but they require a $300 tool to make work and we would never justify the expense.
Unfortunately the splices come in huge qts also and we can't really justify that now. We're trying some samples now.