Food and drink exports to the European Union have fallen by more than a third since Brexit, new data has showed.
Food & Drink Federation figures out this week showed that British food and drink exports to the bloc slumped by 34.1% in 2024 when compared with 2019 levels – before the UK left the EU.
Food and drink exports last year reached £24.5bn, a 0.3% increase from the year before. However, these stable values reflected rising inflation. In fact, total food and drink export volumes fell by more than a tenth (12.6%) last year, compared with 2023.
The FDF noted this was a part of Britain’s wider long-term trend of falling exports globally. Overall, the UK’s global food and drink export volumes were down a fifth (19.8%) on average from 2020 to 2024, compared with 2015 to 2019.
The FDF noted this was largely down to the UK’s “post-Brexit arrangements”, which came with added bureaucracy and costs for businesses.
“While some of this decline can be linked to global trends like Covid and the war in Ukraine, the report reveals that other European countries, including the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, have seen their export volumes increase since 2020,” the FDF noted in its 2024 Trade Snapshot.
“This indicates that the downturn in food export volumes is not part of a global trend, but unique to the UK’s post-Brexit arrangements.”
Meanwhile, food and drink imports from the EU to the UK grew 3.3% last year to £44.7bn compared with 2023, as European businesses “benefit from a more advantageous trading environment, even after new border checks for EU food and drink products were introduced in April 2024”, according to the trade association.
The EU rolled out strict documentation and physical checks on UK goods in 2021, but Britain only recently reciprocated when it introduced similar checks on European goods in April last year.
Food and drink imports to the UK being subject to fewer checks compared with UK businesses exporting equivalent products to Europe had helped drive import growth, the FDF claimed.
This had contributed to total food and drink imports to the UK reaching their highest ever level, worth £63.1bn in 2024.
Meanwhile, many UK exporters, particularly SMEs, are still struggling to meet the EU’s more stringent requirements.
More ‘strategic approach’ needed
The FDF is calling for a more “strategic approach” to EU trade relations to help reverse the “concerning gap between UK food and drink imports and exports”.
The Labour government has pledged to negotiate a veterinary deal with the EU that would remove the need for the more burdensome red tape on agrifood goods, such as export health certificates and physical checks on products at the UK-EU borders.
“These latest figures show the stark reality for the UK’s 12,500 food and drink businesses who are struggling to deal with the complexity and bureaucracy that comes when trading with Europe,” said Balwinder Dhoot, director of industry growth and sustainability at the FDF.
“Government must prioritise working with the EU, and our industry, to remove as many of these barriers as possible.
“It’s important that we don’t just get a quick fix, but the right fit for the UK when it comes to our relationship with the EU,” he added, which remains the UK’s most important food and drink trade partner, accounting for 61.8% of exports and 75.6% of imports in 2024.
Across the rest of the globe, food export volumes have increased 5.7% year on year as the UK reaps the benefits of recent new trade agreements. Salmon exports have surged with an almost 50% increase in volume, making it one of the top-performing products in 2024.
And two years after the Australia free trade agreement (FTA) entered into force, the value of exports to the country increased 9.1% to £429.5m.
Additionally, while Ireland and France remain the UK’s biggest individual export markets, the US, which took the third spot, saw particularly strong growth last year – up 11.8% versus 2023.
Other markets including Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries were also top targets for growing exports opportunities, the FDF noted.
Nicola Thomas, director of the UK Food & Drink Exporters Association, said: “Against a backdrop of global geopolitical and economic uncertainty, it is encouraging to note several new countries are potentially opening up for UK food and drink exporters as FTAs come into play.
“Here at the FDEA, we are increasingly seeing that leveraging the knowledge, expertise and experience of industry peers, international trade specialists and in-market experts has never been more important to help navigate both the opportunities and challenges which lie ahead.”
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