HS 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22
Customs records across the 7 HS chapters food trades under — processed meat and fish and the rest of the category, with named buyers, suppliers, quantities and prices.
Food Processing & Beverages covers processed meat and fish, sugar and confectionery, cocoa and chocolate, bakery and cereal preparations, sauces and preparations, juices, spirits and beverages. All of it crosses borders under chapters 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 of the Harmonized System, which is the only definition of the industry that customs — and therefore the data — actually recognises.
| # | Market | Value | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | United States | $99.4B | 2024 |
| 02 | Germany | $45.0B | 2024 |
| 03 | United Kingdom | $41.4B | 2024 |
| 04 | France | $32.7B | 2024 |
| 05 | Netherlands | $30.3B | 2024 |
| 06 | China | $27.4B | 2024 |
| 07 | Canada | $24.5B | 2024 |
| 08 | Japan | $19.6B | 2024 |
| 09 | Italy | $16.8B | 2024 |
| 10 | Belgium | $16.1B | 2024 |
| 11 | Spain | $14.4B | 2024 |
| 12 | Poland | $12.0B | 2024 |
Source: UN Comtrade, official statistics reported by national authorities. Figures are country-level aggregates, not shipment records.
Open a chapter for its own market table, partner countries and multi-year values. The chapter pages are where a product-level search starts.
Preparations of meat, of fish or of crustaceans, molluscs
Learn more ›Sugars and sugar confectionery
Learn more ›Cocoa and cocoa preparations
Learn more ›Preparations of cereals, flour, starch or milk; pastrycooks' products
Learn more ›Preparations of vegetables, fruit, nuts or other parts of plants
Learn more ›Miscellaneous edible preparations
Learn more ›Beverages, spirits and vinegar
Learn more ›What the record shows
Two sides of the same declaration, and they answer different questions.
Import records are your demand map: retail and HORECA buyers import to a shelf calendar, which is visible in the monthly pattern.
Export records are your supply map: shelf-life and certification constrain the lanes, so the port pair says more than the volume.
What India reports across the food chapters, on each chapter’s latest filed year. Use it to size the domestic base before you go looking for a counterparty in it.
| HS | Chapter | Exports | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | Sugars and sugar confectionery | $2.6B | 2024 |
| 21 | Miscellaneous edible preparations | $1.6B | 2024 |
| 20 | Preparations of vegetables, fruit, nuts or other… | $1.2B | 2024 |
| 19 | Preparations of cereals, flour, starch or milk… | $877.3M | 2024 |
| 16 | Preparations of meat, of fish or of crustaceans… | $731.9M | 2024 |
| 22 | Beverages, spirits and vinegar | $453.1M | 2024 |
| 18 | Cocoa and cocoa preparations | $229.9M | 2024 |
| HS | Chapter | Imports | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | Sugars and sugar confectionery | $1.9B | 2024 |
| 22 | Beverages, spirits and vinegar | $1.3B | 2024 |
| 18 | Cocoa and cocoa preparations | $866.1M | 2024 |
| 21 | Miscellaneous edible preparations | $212.3M | 2024 |
| 19 | Preparations of cereals, flour, starch or milk… | $169.9M | 2024 |
| 20 | Preparations of vegetables, fruit, nuts or other… | $165.5M | 2024 |
| 16 | Preparations of meat, of fish or of crustaceans… | $7.6M | 2024 |
There is no single tariff line called food. Customs classifies goods, not industries, so the trade that a food business actually does is spread across chapters 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Search one of them and you measure a slice; read them together and you measure the category. This is not a subtlety — for a multi-chapter industry, a single-chapter view can understate the market by more than half, and every conclusion built on it inherits the error.
The practical consequence is that market sizing, competitor tracking and buyer discovery all have to be run across the full chapter set. A competitor that appears to have shrunk may simply have shifted its mix from one chapter to another. A market that looks saturated in one chapter may be wide open in the adjacent one. The chapter pages linked above are the detail; this page is the view that holds them together.
| Chapter | Covers | Read it for |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | Preparations of meat, of fish or of crustaceans, molluscs | Product-level markets, partners and multi-year values |
| 17 | Sugars and sugar confectionery | Product-level markets, partners and multi-year values |
| 18 | Cocoa and cocoa preparations | Product-level markets, partners and multi-year values |
| 19 | Preparations of cereals, flour, starch or milk; pastrycook | Product-level markets, partners and multi-year values |
| 20 | Preparations of vegetables, fruit, nuts or other parts of | Product-level markets, partners and multi-year values |
| 21 | Miscellaneous edible preparations | Product-level markets, partners and multi-year values |
| 22 | Beverages, spirits and vinegar | Product-level markets, partners and multi-year values |
Every importer in the record is already buying the category. That is the whole advantage over a directory, and it is worth being precise about how to exploit it. Start by fixing the chapters, then narrow to markets you can actually service — certification, logistics and price all have to work before volume means anything. What remains is a list of companies with a demonstrated, dated, quantified need.
Rank that list on behaviour rather than on size. A buyer clearing consignments in most months has an operating requirement; a buyer with one large consignment two years ago has a project that has finished. A buyer already using several suppliers is more approachable than one that has bought from a single origin for a decade. In food specifically, retail and HORECA buyers import to a shelf calendar, which is visible in the monthly pattern.
Read the export flow of the same chapters and the question inverts. A genuine manufacturer ships consistently, across several destinations, over years, at consignment sizes that are stable enough to imply a production process behind them. A merchant exporter ships across unrelated chapters without a matching input trail. Neither is disqualifying, but you should know which you are talking to before you negotiate terms, because their cost structures are not comparable.
One point specific to this category: shelf-life and certification constrain the lanes, so the port pair says more than the volume. That is the kind of detail that separates a useful shortlist from a long one, and it is not visible in any self-reported profile.
Declared value divided by declared quantity gives a unit value, and aggregated carefully it becomes a price band you can hold a counterparty to. Carefully is the operative word: compare at the tightest published digit level, within one period, from one origin, in one unit of measure, with the outliers removed. A comparison that fails any of those controls will be dismissed the moment you put it on a table, and rightly.
Read the spread rather than the average. A tight band means the price is structural and your negotiating effort belongs elsewhere — payment terms, lead time, minimum order quantity. A wide band inside a single HS line usually means a grade difference that the declaration does not capture, and asking a supplier to name that difference is a more productive conversation than asking them to match a number.
Almost every traded category has a buying calendar, and reading a single period against no baseline produces confident, wrong conclusions. Compare like periods year on year, use at least three years before calling anything a trend, and drop the most recent one or two periods entirely — they are still filling in. A buyer who appears to have stopped buying has very often just been read too early.
These are official aggregates reported to UN Comtrade: country-level, annual, and reconciled across reporters. They establish the shape of the market. The shipment-level records that name a specific importer or exporter are a different dataset, filed with national customs authorities, and they are what a buyer or supplier list is actually built from.
Every importer of your food lines in a chosen market, ranked by shipment count and declared value.
Confirm shipping history, destination spread and consistency before a first order rather than after it.
Compare declared values by origin so a quotation is argued from the record instead of from a hunch.
Follow a named company across the chapters — what it moves, where from, and how the volume is trending.
Measure real food import demand in a country before committing to registration or certification.
Work back from real shipment descriptions to the classification customs actually accepted for goods like yours.
Related
It is the customs record for every consignment that clears under the HS chapters food files against — 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Each row names the importer and exporter, the product as declared, the quantity, the value and the ports used.
Food Processing & Beverages spans chapters 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. No single chapter contains the industry, which is why searching one code at a time under-counts the market — the chapters have to be read together.
Filter import records to the chapters above and to the markets you can service. The companies that recur period after period are the accounts worth approaching; retail and HORECA buyers import to a shelf calendar, which is visible in the monthly pattern.
Read the export side of the same chapters. A genuine manufacturer ships consistently to several destinations over years. Note that shelf-life and certification constrain the lanes, so the port pair says more than the volume.
Yes. Every market with a country page carries its own chapter breakdown, and the shipment-level records are filterable by country, port and date range.
Because customs classifies goods, not industries. Food Processing & Beverages is spread across 7 chapters, so a single-chapter search measures a slice of the category and inherits that error into every conclusion built on it. Read the chapters together.
Divide declared value by declared quantity, then control the comparison: same tariff line, same period, same origin, same unit of measure, outliers removed. Read the spread rather than the average — a wide spread inside one line is usually a grade difference the declaration does not capture.
Most traded categories have a buying calendar, so compare like periods year on year rather than month on month, use at least three years before calling anything a trend, and exclude the most recent periods, which are still filling in.
The tables on this page are official country-level aggregates reported to UN Comtrade — they establish the shape of the market. Shipment-level records are filed with national customs authorities and name individual importers and exporters; that is the dataset a buyer or supplier list is actually built from.
Tell us which of the food chapters you trade and we will send live customs records for it, drawn from the market you name.