How to import groundnuts (peanuts) into the UK from India: the controls, documents and checks, step by step

How to import groundnuts (peanuts) into the UK from India: the controls, documents and checks, step by step

Groundnuts from India are high-risk food not of animal origin — they need a CHED-D and an aflatoxin sampling check at the BCP.

That one sentence is the part most people get wrong about this route. Peanuts feel like ordinary dried food, so importers treat them as a customs job: classify, declare, pay the duty, done. But groundnuts from India sit on the GB list of food and feed not of animal origin under intensified official controls — the HRFNAO category — and that puts a second, separate gate in front of your consignment. Port health, not just customs, decides whether the container moves.

This guide walks one consignment of Indian groundnuts from purchase order to release: the systems involved (CHED-D, IPAFFS, commodity codes, the BCP check), the documents you actually need (the aflatoxin analytical report chief among them), and the points where shipments stall. It's practical guidance, not regulated advice — rules and sampling frequencies change, so always check the current position for your exact commodity code and origin, or ask us.

Why are groundnuts from India treated as high-risk?

Groundnuts (peanuts) from India are classified as high-risk food not of animal origin (HRFNAO) because of the aflatoxin risk. Aflatoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by moulds that thrive on nuts in warm, humid conditions. GB controls this risk by listing the commodity-and-origin pairing for increased official controls, with set documentary, identity and physical checks at the border.

The legal backbone here is Regulation (EU) 2019/1793, retained in GB law, which lists specific food-and-origin combinations subject to a temporary increase in official controls — and sets the sampling frequency for each. Groundnuts and groundnut products from India have featured on that list through successive reviews. The frequency is fixed by the regulation, not decided consignment-by-consignment at the port: when the list says a given percentage of consignments must be physically sampled and analysed, that is what the Border Control Post (BCP) enforces.

Two things follow from "high-risk". First, the type of pre-notification you raise is a CHED-D (Common Health Entry Document for feed and food of non-animal origin), not the CHED-P used for products of animal origin or the CHED-PP used for plants and plant products. Second, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) sets the maximum aflatoxin levels your groundnuts must meet, and the BCP checks them against that limit. Per GOV.UK's guidance on high-risk food and feed not of animal origin, the list is reviewed periodically, so the rule that applied last quarter is not guaranteed to apply to your next shipment — check before you book.

Does my customs declaration clearing mean the consignment is released?

No. For Indian groundnuts, customs clearance and SPS release are two separate gates, and clearing customs does not release the container. The BCP can still hold the consignment for an identity or physical check, including aflatoxin sampling, after customs is satisfied. Both must be cleared before the goods can legally enter free circulation.

This is the single most expensive misread on this route. Your customs declaration in CDS (the Customs Declaration Service) deals with the duty, the commodity code, the customs value and the import VAT. Port health deals with the food-safety controls under the HRFNAO regime. They run on different systems, answer to different authorities (HMRC for customs; the port health authority for SPS), and a green light from one tells you nothing about the other. A consignment can be customs-cleared and still sitting in a BCP holding bay waiting for a sampling result.

For a perishable or time-sensitive load, that gap costs money. Storage and demurrage start the moment the box stops moving, and the cost of a hold compounds the longer the consignment sits. The fix is not heroics at the border — it's getting the SPS side right before arrival, which is what the rest of this guide covers.

What is BTOM and where do groundnuts sit in it?

The Border Target Operating Model (BTOM) is the GB framework that sorts imported goods into risk categories and sets the level of control each receives. For food not of animal origin, BTOM works alongside the HRFNAO regime: high-risk commodities like Indian groundnuts get the most stringent treatment — pre-notification plus the prospect of documentary, identity and physical checks at a BCP.

BTOM reorganised how SPS controls are applied and where checks happen. If you classified your groundnuts or built your import process before BTOM bedded in, it's worth re-checking where the commodity now sits and which BCP your goods must route through — BCPs are designated for specific commodity types, and you cannot land HRFNAO goods at a port that isn't authorised to check them. Per GOV.UK's BTOM guidance, the categorisation and the designated points of entry are the starting point for planning any controlled-food import.

Step by step: importing a consignment of Indian groundnuts

Here is one container traced end to end. Treat it as the shape of the process, not a substitute for checking your specific commodity code and the current rules.

Step 1 — Classify the goods and confirm the controls

Start with the commodity code. Groundnuts fall under tariff headings in Chapter 12 (oil seeds and oleaginous fruits — in-shell and shelled groundnuts) or, for prepared/preserved peanuts, Chapter 20. The exact code drives three things at once: the duty rate, whether any relief or preference applies, and which import controls attach. Get this right first — a wrong code cascades into the wrong CHED, the wrong checks, and potentially overpaid or underpaid duty.

With the code confirmed, check the HRFNAO list on GOV.UK for your code-and-origin pairing to confirm groundnuts from India are still listed and at what sampling frequency. This is the moment to confirm you need a CHED-D and an accompanying analytical report, before you commit to the shipment.

Step 2 — Line up the documents before the goods ship

For this route you'll typically need:

• Commercial documents — commercial invoice and packing list, with the commodity code and origin stated.
• Analytical (aflatoxin) report — for groundnuts on the increased-controls list, the regulation requires the results of sampling and analysis for aflatoxins. Confirm whether your consignment needs an analytical certificate accompanying it and exactly which fields it must carry; this is grounded in the requirements of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 as retained in GB.
• Transport documents — bill of lading or airway freight documents.
• CHED-D — raised by you (or your agent) in IPAFFS, see Step 3.

The document that quietly breaks consignments is the analytical report: either it's missing, it doesn't match the consignment lot, or no one confirms the link between the certificate and the physical goods. Decide now who in your process attaches it and who confirms it matches.

Step 3 — Pre-notify in IPAFFS and raise the CHED-D

You pre-notify the import in IPAFFS (the Import of Products, Animals, Food and Feed System) by raising a CHED-D. This must be done before the consignment arrives at the GB BCP — the regulation works on pre-notification, and late notification puts you at the back of the queue with the clock running.

On the CHED-D you declare the commodity, the origin, the consignment details and the BCP it will arrive at. Getting the CHED type wrong (raising a CHED-P or CHED-PP by mistake) means a re-do, and a re-do on a perishable load is exactly the delay you're trying to avoid. Booking the BCP slot is the importer's responsibility — not something to assume your freight forwarder has silently handled. BCP inspection capacity is finite, so book ahead of arrival.

Step 4 — Arrival, customs declaration and the SPS decision

On arrival, two things run in parallel. Your customs declaration goes into CDS for the duty, import VAT and customs value. Separately, port health works from your CHED-D and decides the level of check: documentary (every consignment), and then — at the regulation's set frequency — identity and physical checks, the latter including drawing samples for aflatoxin analysis.

If your consignment is selected for physical sampling, this is where time disappears. Samples are drawn and sent for analysis, and the goods are held pending the result. Build this into your timeline rather than discovering it at the border — the point most groundnut imports stall isn't customs, it's the sampling check no one scheduled time for.

Step 5 — Release (or the hold)

If the documentary, identity and (where applicable) physical checks are satisfied and the aflatoxin results are within the FSA limits, port health clears the SPS side. With customs also cleared, the consignment is released into free circulation. If a sample fails the aflatoxin limit, the consignment can be refused, re-dispatched or destroyed — which is why the pre-shipment analytical work and a reputable supplier matter long before the box reaches the UK.

How does the India trade deal affect importing groundnuts?

A free trade agreement changes tariffs, not SPS controls. Even where a deal reduces or removes duty on a commodity, the food-safety regime — the HRFNAO listing, the CHED-D, the aflatoxin sampling at the BCP — sits on a separate track and continues to apply. The commercial saving on duty doesn't move the border-health requirement.

It's an easy conflation: "we've got a trade deal with India, so this should be simpler." On the customs and tariff side, possibly. On the SPS side, the controls on high-risk groundnuts are driven by food-safety risk, not by trade negotiation, and they change through the periodic reviews of the increased-controls list rather than through tariff schedules. Treat the two questions — what duty do I pay? and what checks must the consignment pass? — as genuinely separate, and check the current position on each.

What does this all cost, and what don't I need?

Honestly: the costs that bite on this route are rarely the duty. They're the BCP check fees, the storage and demurrage if a consignment is held for sampling, and the lost value if a perishable load sits while it waits. The way to control them is upstream — accurate classification, a clean analytical report, a correctly typed CHED-D raised in good time, and a booked BCP slot.

What you don't need is to over-engineer the rest. You don't need a CHED-P or CHED-PP — groundnuts are non-animal-origin food, so the CHED-D is the right document. You don't need an Export Health Certificate (EHC); that's an export-side document for animal products leaving a country, not what governs your import. And you don't need to treat every food import as identically high-risk — the HRFNAO regime is specific. This route is high-risk because of aflatoxin in groundnuts from India; a different commodity or origin can sit in an entirely different category. That's the whole point of checking the list rather than guessing. Advisory, not a black box.

Bringing it together

Importing groundnuts from India is a two-gate process. Customs handles the commodity code, duty and import VAT through CDS. Port health handles the high-risk food controls — a CHED-D pre-notified in IPAFFS, an aflatoxin analytical report, and the prospect of documentary, identity and physical sampling checks at the BCP, at a frequency set by Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 as retained in GB. Clearing one doesn't clear the other. Get the classification, the documents and the pre-notification right before the goods ship, book your BCP slot, and build sampling time into the timeline — and the route is entirely manageable.

Because the increased-controls list is reviewed periodically and BTOM continues to evolve, treat the specifics above as the shape of the process and confirm the live detail for your commodity code before each shipment.

Something held, or a groundnut consignment moving soon? The Falsum Helpdesk triages live customs & SPS issues — support.falsum.co.uk. Tell us the goods and the route, and we'll tell you exactly what you need.

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