Exporting beer from our brewery to France

Question

Hello,

We are a micro brewery in London East.
We only sell our beer in the UK but we are planning to export our beer in France.
We would like to export 3 types of beer. (33cl cans)

The problem is that we don’t really know where to start.
So, our questions are :

Is there any special taxes or duties to export alcohol from the UK to France ?

Do we have to make certain controls before being able to export?

What factors should we take into account at the end of power to export in this country?

Generally speaking, by where to begin and how has to take place this process? Knowing that we wish to export our beers in cans of 33cl by boxes of 24 cans (and so by palette).

Thank you very much in advance.

Léo, intern at Three Sods Brewery

Answer

Hi Leo,

You’ll hopefully get some useful answers shortly. In the meantime, we did do a webinar on exporting beer for beginners a couple of years ago which may be of use:

https://opentoexport.com/webinars/export-beer-milk/

Will

Answer

Hi Léo,

To save you having to pay UK duty on the beer destined for France you would typically ship the goods in duty suspension.  To do this you need to register with HMRC to have a tax warehouse, if you haven’t already. You will be issued with a GBWK number (warehouse keeper number) and GB number for each approved warehouse.
Using those details you can make a declaration and ship the goods to your customer in France with just a freight cost. The customer will release the goods for sale in France by paying French excise duty.

You might want to speak to a guy called Dave at RCH Brewery as they are already doing this and have been through the process. They use our software to make the HMRC declarations and raise the required paperwork.

Drop me a line if you require contact details.
Kind regards,
Ian.

i2i Infinity Ltd

Office: +44 (0) 1749 345007

i2i Website: www.i2i-infinity.co.uk

Email: [email protected]

Export Action Plan