Fresh sweet potato moving from Egypt into either market travels with a phytosanitary certificate issued by the origin authority, carrying whatever additional declarations the destination requires. The declarations are not identical between the UK and the EU and they change. Confirm the current wording with your broker before the season starts rather than assuming last year's template is still valid.
Both markets set maximum residue levels for pesticides, and they are no longer automatically the same figure for the same substance. On top of that, most large retailers apply their own limits that are stricter than the legal ones — often expressed as a percentage of the legal maximum, or as a cap on the number of detectable residues.
If you supply a retailer, their specification is the one that governs in practice. Ask for the residue analysis before shipment, not after, and make sure the laboratory used is one your customer accepts.
Both markets apply marketing standards governing quality class, sizing, uniformity, presentation and labelling for fresh produce. Class I is the normal export grade. The practical requirements — what must appear on the package, how uniform the contents must be, what tolerances apply — should be confirmed for the destination and written into the specification rather than assumed.
A certificate of origin travels with the consignment. Where a trade agreement allows preferential duty treatment, the supporting origin documentation must be correct at the point of shipment; it is not something that can be fixed retrospectively. This is worth real money on volume and is one of the more common places importers leave value on the table.
Both regimes require that a consignment can be traced back through the chain. In practice this means lot coding from field to carton, so that a single carton can be tied to a grower, a packing date and a consignment. Ask what the lot code actually identifies — a code that only identifies the packing day is far less useful in a withdrawal than one that identifies the grower and the field.
Most European buyers will expect the growers and packhouses in the chain to hold recognised certification, commonly GlobalG.A.P. for the farm and a food-safety standard such as BRCGS or IFS for the packhouse, with GRASP or an equivalent covering social criteria where the customer requires it. These certificates belong to the growers and packhouses themselves, not to the trading company selling you the crop — a distinction worth being precise about when you ask for evidence. Ask for the certificate numbers and check them against the issuing body's public register.
