How to import fresh tomatoes from the Netherlands to the UK: the controls, documents and checks, step by step

How to import fresh tomatoes from the Netherlands to the UK: the controls, documents and checks, step by step

Free trade with the EU doesn't mean free movement — your Dutch tomatoes still face plant-health controls regardless of zero tariffs.

That one sentence is where most first-time importers of fresh produce go wrong. The tariff is zero under the UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, so the assumption follows that the goods just turn up and clear. They don't. Fresh tomatoes from the Netherlands are regulated plant produce. They sit under the GB plant health import regime, governed by the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM), pre-notified in IPAFFS — for many regulated lines on a CHED-PP (the Common Health Entry Document for plants and plant products) — declared on a commodity code (tomatoes fall under HS heading 0702), and potentially subject to documentary, identity and physical checks at a Border Control Post (BCP) or control point. The systems are real, named and verifiable. This guide walks the consignment from the Dutch packhouse to GB release and shows you where each control bites — and where it doesn't.

Rules in this area change, and the precise treatment depends on the exact commodity and origin. Treat what follows as practical guidance, not regulated advice, and check the current position for your specific load on GOV.UK or with us before you book freight.

Are fresh tomatoes from the Netherlands actually controlled at the GB border?

Yes. Fresh tomatoes are regulated plant produce, so importing them from the Netherlands is subject to GB plant-health (phytosanitary) controls under the Border Target Operating Model, regardless of the zero tariff. That means a pre-notification in IPAFFS, potentially a phytosanitary certificate from the Dutch authority, and the possibility of checks at the border. It is not a free-for-all crossing.

The thing to internalise is that duty and controls are two separate systems. Tariff (the duty you pay) is governed by the trade agreement and the commodity code. Controls (plant health, or SPS — sanitary and phytosanitary) are governed by the BTOM and by GB plant-health legislation. A consignment can be entirely duty-free and still be held for a plant-health reason. Conflating the two is the single most common and most expensive mistake in EU food import. Your tomatoes can owe nothing in duty and still sit at a control point because the IPAFFS entry was raised late or the risk category was misread.

Per GOV.UK's plant health import guidance, fresh produce is assessed by risk category — and that category, not the word "tomatoes", decides what you actually have to do.

What plant-health risk category do Dutch tomatoes fall into?

Under the Border Target Operating Model, regulated plant produce is placed into high, medium or low risk categories, and GOV.UK publishes the category for each commodity and origin. That category drives everything downstream: whether you need a phytosanitary certificate, whether the consignment must be pre-notified, and the likelihood and type of checks. You confirm your tomatoes' category before you do anything else.

This is the step people skip, and it's the one that governs the rest. APHA (the Animal and Plant Health Agency) and Defra — not your Dutch supplier — define and publish how a given commodity and origin are categorised. The risk category can differ by where the produce was grown and by the specific botanical commodity, which is why "it's just salad from Holland" is not a category you can rely on.

Two consequences flow from the category:

• Medium- and high-risk regulated plants and plant products generally require a phytosanitary certificate issued by the competent authority in the country of export (for the Netherlands, the Dutch NPPO), must be pre-notified in IPAFFS, and are subject to documentary checks plus identity and physical checks at a frequency GOV.UK sets.
• Low-risk regulated produce has lighter requirements — often pre-notification without a phytosanitary certificate, and a low or nil check rate.

The honest position: which band a given tomato consignment falls into depends on the exact commodity and the current published lists, and those lists are revised. Check the live plant health import guidance on GOV.UK for your commodity code and origin, or ask us to confirm it before the grower picks the order. Getting this one input right is most of the job.

What is a CHED-PP and do I need one for tomatoes?

A CHED-PP is the Common Health Entry Document for plants and plant products — the entry-document record generated when you pre-notify a regulated plant consignment in IPAFFS. It is the plant-produce equivalent of the CHED-P used for products of animal origin (POAO). For regulated tomato consignments that require pre-notification, the IPAFFS entry creates the CHED-PP that travels with, and clears, the load. Note the type: PP, not P — P is for animal products, PP is for plants.

This distinction matters because the two documents go through different parts of the system and reference different controls. POAO (meat, dairy, fish, eggs) lives in the animal-products world — CHED-P, export health certificates (EHCs), port health authority checks. Tomatoes never touch that world; they are plant produce and run on the phytosanitary track — CHED-PP, phytosanitary certificate, APHA-overseen plant-health checks. If you have ever imported a chilled meat or dairy line and applied that mental model to salad, you will reach for the wrong document. Name the track correctly at the start.

Whether a CHED-PP is required for your specific tomatoes again depends on the risk category. Regulated produce that must be pre-notified gets one; some low-risk lines have lighter treatment. Confirm against the current guidance for HS 0702 and Dutch origin.

When do I have to raise the IPAFFS pre-notification?

The pre-notification is the moment that decides whether your tomatoes clear or sit at the border — and it is raised before the consignment arrives in GB, not after the truck shows up. APHA's guidance sets a pre-notification window in advance of arrival; you submit the IPAFFS entry within that window so the system and, where applicable, the control point have the consignment on record before it reaches the frontier. Miss it and the load can be held.

The responsibility sits with you, the importer (or your agent acting for you) — not the Dutch grower and not the haulier. Your freight forwarder books the crossing; knowing whether the load needs a CHED-PP and raising the IPAFFS entry in time is the importer's obligation. This is the exact gap that produces the 4pm-Friday hold: everyone assumed someone else had it.

What the IPAFFS entry actually declares is concrete — the commodity, the volume, the country of origin, the place of destination, the expected arrival, and the supporting documents (including the phytosanitary certificate reference where one is required). Get the commodity code and the volumes right; mismatches between what you declared and what physically arrives are a classic cause of identity-check failures.

Because timings and windows are set by the current operating model and can be revised, confirm the exact pre-notification window that applies to your route before you build it into your booking process. If you set your import process before the BTOM risk categories landed, the timings and requirements you're applying may no longer match the rules.

Which commodity code do tomatoes use, and why does it matter?

Fresh tomatoes are classified under HS heading 0702 (tomatoes, fresh or chilled), with the full commodity code adding further digits for the GB tariff. That code — not the word "tomatoes" — is what the whole import hangs on: it sets your duty treatment, it determines the plant-health controls and risk category that apply, and it's the code you declare in IPAFFS and on the customs entry in CDS (the Customs Declaration Service).

Getting the code right is foundational because every downstream system reads it. A wrong or imprecise code can put you in the wrong control category, attach the wrong checks, or — if duty did apply — produce the wrong landed cost. With Dutch origin under the UK–EU agreement the tariff is typically zero where rules of origin are met, but the code still governs the controls regardless of the duty being nil. Classification is worth getting right once, properly, and reusing — rather than guessing per shipment.

If your supplier gives you a code, treat it as a starting point and verify it against the GB tariff for your exact product; the EU and GB schedules are not identical, and the responsibility for the GB declaration is yours.

What documents and data do I actually need? A worked example

Let's run a realistic consignment end to end so the moving parts are visible. Take a load of fresh vine tomatoes grown in the Netherlands, sold to a GB wholesaler, moving by accompanied trailer through a short-straits route.

1. Before the order is picked — settle the inputs.

• Confirm the commodity code under HS 0702 for the exact product.
• Look up the plant-health risk category for that commodity and Dutch origin on GOV.UK.
• That category tells you whether you need a phytosanitary certificate and a CHED-PP, and whether checks are likely.
• Decide who clears it — you in-house, a customs agent, or us — and make sure that party has access and instructions.

2. At the Dutch end — get the export documentation.

• If a phytosanitary certificate is required, the grower/exporter arranges it through the Dutch NPPO; the produce is inspected and certified in the Netherlands before export. The certificate reference is data you'll need for IPAFFS.
• Confirm rules of origin evidence if you're claiming the zero tariff — the goods need to qualify as EU-originating under the agreement.

3. Before arrival — pre-notify in IPAFFS.

• Raise the IPAFFS entry within the pre-notification window: commodity code, volume, origin, place of destination, expected arrival, and the phytosanitary certificate reference where applicable. This generates the CHED-PP.

4. The customs side — the import declaration in CDS.

• Separately from the plant-health pre-notification, an import declaration is lodged in CDS for the customs entry. Movements through locations using GVMS (the Goods Vehicle Movement Service) need the declaration references linked into a goods movement reference so the vehicle can board and move. Plant-health pre-notification and customs declaration are two distinct obligations — both have to be in place.

5. At the border — the checks.

• Documentary checks verify the paperwork matches the consignment.
• Identity checks confirm the load is what was declared (right commodity, right marks).
• Physical checks inspect the produce itself for plant-health risk, at a frequency set by the risk category and current check rates, carried out at a BCP or designated control point.
• Where checks aren't triggered, the consignment proceeds on the strength of the documentary record.

6. Release.

• Once any checks are cleared, the consignment is released for free circulation in GB and on to the wholesaler.

The pattern to notice: almost every avoidable hold is a paper or data problem caught at stages 1–3, not a tomato problem caught at stage 5. Most tomato holds aren't about the tomatoes — they're about a missing field, a wrong code, or a CHED raised too late.

How do customs, plant-health and labelling fit together?

They're parallel obligations that all have to be satisfied for the same consignment, and they're easy to confuse. Customs (the CDS declaration, the commodity code, any duty, GVMS for the movement) governs the fiscal and movement side. Plant health (IPAFFS pre-notification, CHED-PP, phytosanitary certificate, BCP checks) governs the biosecurity side. They run on different systems and you can satisfy one and fail the other.

For fresh whole tomatoes sold loose or in standard retail packs, the customs and plant-health controls above are the load-bearing ones. Labelling obligations under retained food information rules (FIC) bite more on packaged and processed products than on loose fresh produce — but if your tomatoes are pre-packed for retail, check the labelling requirements for the GB market separately, because that's a distinct regime again. The point for an operations lead: don't assume clearing the border is the end of compliance, and don't assume the labelling rules and the border rules are the same conversation.

If duty did apply to your commodity (it generally won't for qualifying EU-origin tomatoes, but the principle holds across produce lines), reliefs and the correct origin treatment can change the landed cost materially — another reason the commodity code and origin evidence are worth getting right at the start rather than discovering at the entry.

Why does timing matter so much for tomatoes specifically?

Because tomatoes are perishable — every hour a held consignment sits at a control point, the value in the trailer drops. A documentary error that would be a minor administrative fix for a tin of tomatoes is a commercial loss for fresh ones, because the clock is the cost. This is why the pre-notification discipline matters more for fresh produce than almost any other category: the penalty for a late or wrong entry isn't just a delay, it's spoilage.

That reframes where to spend effort. The cheapest place to fix a fresh-produce import is on paper, before the truck moves — the right commodity code, the confirmed risk category, the certificate arranged at the Dutch end, the IPAFFS entry in the window. Fix it there and the border is a formality. Discover it at the BCP and you're managing a perishable hold against a falling clock.

Bringing it together

Importing fresh tomatoes from the Netherlands is genuinely manageable — but only once you stop treating zero tariff as zero process. The work is: classify the goods correctly under HS 0702, confirm the current plant-health risk category for that commodity and Dutch origin on GOV.UK, arrange a phytosanitary certificate at the Dutch end if your category needs one, raise the IPAFFS pre-notification (and the CHED-PP) inside the window before arrival, lodge the customs declaration in CDS and link it for the movement, and be ready for documentary, identity and physical checks scaled to your risk category. Get the inputs right early and the border stops being a place where value disappears.

Borders are complicated. We aren't. The rules here change by commodity and over time, so confirm the current position for your exact product and route before you commit a load.

Something held, or moving soon? The Falsum Helpdesk triages live customs and SPS issues — tell us the goods and the route, and we'll tell you exactly what you need. → https://support.falsum.co.uk

FAQ