Food & Drink

Cost Effective Training,  Business Support and Helpline for the Food & Drink Industry


Why not make our specialist in all areas of international trade and customs regulations part of your team? Why spend thousands employing specialists in these areas when we can be available via email or telephone when you need us.

National statistics showed that 3.6 million people were employed in 2019 within the agri food sector with 7,130 micro, small and medium sized SME’s within the food and drink sector with turnover of around £21 billion and 135,000 employees in 2019. This ever changing industry showed that Immediately prior to the implementation of a nationwide lockdown (week ending 22 March 2020), the volume of food purchased by consumers peaked at 1.07 billion kilograms/litres/packs. This accounted for a 44% year-on-year increase in purchased volume of food from the same week in 2019 according to the food statistics team


Source - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/food-statistics-pocketbook/food-statistics-in-your-pocket-food-chain


The importation or exportation of food into GB or out of GB is regulated by DEFRA, the department for environment food and rural affairs. Defra recently introduced a new phased approach mechanism to the importation of POAO, ABP and Plant and plant health products from JAN 1ST 2022. This means that importers and freight forwarders will need to be aware of the changes and requirements from January of next year


Pre notification at import will need to be submitted on the new IPAFFS system Import of products, animals, food and feed system which you will register on via the government gateway. Strong and Herd offer two Focus on food courses for both Importing and exporting food which cover and in depth approach to what you as a business need to be import ready for these changes as well as a specific tariff classification course for food and food products to help your business be ready.


Download this free Guide "Industry at a glance May 2021":

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Link provided by the Food and Drink Federation (UK) and visit their website.

Training Options

Strong & Herd LLP offer international trade training as a public or in-company solution.


Public training courses relevant to the Food and Drink sectors include:

Export beginners training courses

In-company training courses

All the courses listed above can be tailored to fit the requirements of companies involved in the Foods and Drinks industry, including Alcohol and Tobacco and extended to include the key international trade areas you need to know about.


We have trained experienced specialists in the areas of selling and promoting foods and drink products overseas, practical experience on how to physically move these types of goods and the challenges faced by overseas customs and phytosantiary measures and the issues surronding the tariff classification of foods stuffs – dependent on sugar content, whether fresh or frozen, etc and the related customs duty preferences that may, or may not, apply, eg GSP.


We also have specialist in excise goods and the very particular skills and compliance issues related to trading in excise goods such as tobacco and alcohol.

On-line training courses and e-learning

Although we have a number of on-line international trade training courses for sale publically on our website our main area of on-line training is creating bespoke in-company training solutions which enables businesses to create their own e-learning training packages in bite-sized chunks – what we call SPOTLIGHTS – lasting between 1-2 hours per session. These SPOTLIGHTS can cover standard topics (as listed above) but the main advantage of this type of training solution is that we can ensure SPOTLIGHTS are written (and kept up-to-date) specifically covering what your business needs.


We suggest considering 4 standards for training in international trade matters:

Bronze: Awareness level training

Silver: Intermediate level training

Gold: Advance training

Platinum: Advanced training and professional

Therefore, we are able to offer Distance Learning courses for all areas of international trade and customs compliance, some topics already exists other may have to be developed to make them in-company specific. Distance Learning can be via our on-line training portal which can be used on an individual basis (cost of between £35.00 – £65.00 per person/ per session) or as a corporate designed package administered either by S&H or by you. Alternatively we can organise bespoke interactive webinars, generally up to 2 hour long, to cover bite-sized chunks of information. This can be supported, if required, by the use of our assessment programmes.

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