IN Brief:
- UK food and drink export volumes fell 11.7% year on year to 4 billion kg during the first half of 2026.
- Imports reached 19.1 billion kg, helping widen the first-half trade deficit to £21.1 billion.
- Export values fell across EU and non-EU markets as manufacturers continued to face cost and trade pressures.
The Food and Drink Federation has reported a sharp deterioration in UK food and drink trade during the first half of 2026, with export volumes falling 11.7% year on year while the sector’s trade deficit widened to £21.1 billion.
Total export volumes fell to 4 billion kg, their third-lowest first-half level since 2000. The figure sits only marginally above the volumes recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic and in the aftermath of the 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak, according to the federation’s latest Trade Snapshot.
Imports moved in the opposite direction. The UK brought in 19.1 billion kg of food and drink during the first six months of the year, the second-highest first-half volume in the series behind 2025. Import value rose 0.9% to £33.1 billion, while exports fell 3.4% to £12 billion.
The £21.1 billion gap is the largest first-half food and drink trade deficit recorded since 2000. The volume figures also extend a decline visible in the first quarter, when export volumes were already 8.9% lower year on year.
Export performance weakened across both European and wider international markets. Sales to the EU fell 0.9% in value, including declines of 4.9% to Ireland and 4.6% to France, the UK’s two largest individual food and drink export destinations.
Non-EU export value fell 6.9%. Shipments to the United Arab Emirates were down 23.4%, while exports to the United States declined 16.5%. The federation links part of that US weakness to tariffs that have altered the competitive position of UK products relative to suppliers from other markets.
The FDF argues that the widening gap reflects more than changes in overseas demand. Manufacturers have faced sustained increases in energy, ingredients, labour, packaging, logistics, and compliance costs, while investment decisions are being made against a backdrop of regulatory change and uncertain trade conditions.
Those arguments come from an industry body representing manufacturers and should be read as its policy assessment rather than a neutral explanation of every movement in the data. The trade figures themselves, however, show a clear change in the balance between what the UK food and drink sector is shipping overseas and what the domestic market is bringing in.
That balance matters because food trade is partly a measure of manufacturing competitiveness rather than simply agricultural output. Many exports are processed products whose value is created through formulation, production, packaging, branding, and distribution, while UK factories also depend heavily on imported commodities and ingredients that are not produced domestically at sufficient scale.
Imports are therefore not automatically evidence of industrial weakness. They form part of the raw material base used by UK manufacturers and can support production for both domestic and overseas customers. The more important question is whether factories based in the UK retain enough cost, productivity, and market access advantage to compete with imported finished products while continuing to grow exports.
The first-half figures place pressure on that position. Non-EU import volumes were 22% higher than in the first half of 2023, while UK export volumes have moved further down a historically weak range. That combination increases the significance of factory productivity, ingredient costs, and market access in decisions over where new production is located.
The federation is urging government to focus tariff suspensions on ingredients used by domestic manufacturers rather than on finished packaged foods. It argues that reducing input costs would strengthen UK production without providing the same advantage to imported finished products.
It is also calling for manufacturers to make better use of the UK’s free trade agreements and for a future UK-EU sanitary and phytosanitary agreement to reduce barriers faced by exporters. Those proposals remain part of an active policy debate rather than established outcomes, and the effect would depend on the detail of any measures adopted.
The FDF’s H1 report also points to potential opportunities in markets linked to CPTPP expansion and Mercosur, but the current numbers remain dominated by established trade relationships. Europe continues to account for a substantial share of UK food and drink exports, meaning relatively small changes in friction or demand across nearby markets can have a large aggregate effect.
For manufacturers, weaker exports can eventually translate into lower plant utilisation, shorter campaigns, reduced purchasing leverage, and a more cautious approach to capital investment. A factory designed to serve both UK and overseas customers is harder to justify if one side of that demand base contracts for a prolonged period.
Food and drink remains the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, contributing more than £42 billion to the economy and supporting around half a million jobs. Its scale means the trade gap is not simply a customs statistic: it sits behind decisions on production capacity, sourcing, automation, workforce planning, and future investment.
The second half of 2026 will show whether the decline begins to stabilise. Manufacturers can absorb a poor quarter or temporary disruption, but repeated falls in export volume eventually change the economics of lines and factories built around markets larger than the UK alone.
With exports at their third-lowest first-half volume this century and imports still close to record levels, the competitiveness problem is now visible in hard trade data. The more difficult question is which costs and barriers can be changed quickly enough to influence the next round of manufacturing investment.
