Importing Dehydrated Onion into Germany: Duty, EORI, Documents and Who Buys

The dehydrated onion Germany import market is the largest in the world, about 21,000 tonnes a year worth some 60 million dollars, and it is served in a way that surprises first-time importers: most of the Indian dried onion that German manufacturers use does not arrive from India at all, but from the Netherlands and Belgium, where trading houses import it, hold it, and resell it at a margin of a quarter to a half over the Indian price. The margin pays for convenience, stock on the ground, a Dutch invoice and a phone that is answered in German office hours; it does not pay for a better product, since the product is the same Mahuva onion. A German manufacturer, trader or packer that wants to import directly, or to understand what its Dutch supplier is doing, needs to know the market, the customs mechanics, the documents, the food-law checks and the trading culture, and this guide covers them.

It is written for German buyers and for exporters selling to them, with figures for March 2026. Nothing here is legal or tax advice; a Zollagent and a Steuerberater confirm the specifics for a given company.

What this guide covers

• The German market: size, sources, trend
• Who buys: the sectors and what they want
• The Dutch route: why most German onion comes via Rotterdam
• What a German importer needs before the first container
• Duty, import VAT and the customs value
• Clearance in ATLAS: the steps
• The documents
• Food-law checks: Lebensmittelüberwachung and the importer's file
• Hamburg or Rotterdam: the entry point
• Language, culture and how German buyers work
• Direct from India: what it saves and what it costs
• A worked container landed in Germany
• What German buyers ask at supplier approval
• Germany's regions: where the buyers are
• Austria and Switzerland from the same shipment
• How KlarHarvest serves German buyers
• Frequently asked questions

The German market: size, sources, trend

Germany imports around 21,000 tonnes of dried onion a year under tariff line 0712 20 00, more than any other country, and has done so for a decade with modest growth; the value is about 60 million dollars at the mixed unit values of direct and re-exported product. The origin of the onion is overwhelmingly Indian, with Egypt, China and the United States as minor sources, but the immediate supplier is often not: Indian customs data show about 13,000 tonnes a year shipped from India directly to Germany, and the balance arrives from the Netherlands and Belgium, which import more than they use and re-export the difference, much of it to Germany. The unit value of the direct Indian shipments to Germany, around 1.65 dollars per kilogram FOB in the last fiscal year, and of Dutch and Belgian re-exports into Germany, 2.20 to 3.50 per kilogram delivered, define the margin the trading route takes. Demand is steady rather than growing fast, with a shift toward granules and powder, toward the low bacterial tiers and toward sulphite-free, and with a small but growing organic segment at three times the price. The Indian side of these figures is in Mahuva, Gujarat: Inside India's Onion Dehydration Hub.

Who buys: the sectors and what they want

German buyers are, as a group, the most document-focused in Europe: a supplier approval at a German manufacturer means the plant's IFS or BRCGS certificate and audit summary, the full specification, the residue and contaminant history, the allergen and additive declarations and, usually, a German-language product data sheet, before a sample is even tasted. The approval process from their side is in IFS and BRC Supplier Approval.

The Dutch route: why most German onion comes via Rotterdam

The trading houses of Rotterdam and Antwerp have imported Indian dried vegetables for fifty years, and they do four things a German manufacturer values: they hold stock in a European warehouse so that a pallet is a phone call and two days away, they invoice in euros from an EU company with EU VAT and no import paperwork for the buyer, they carry the working capital between India and delivery, and they take the quality risk, replacing a lot from stock if one fails. They also aggregate small buyers into full containers, which a manufacturer using two pallets a month cannot fill. For that they charge 0.40 to 1.50 euros per kilogram over the landed cost, more on small lots, less on contracts; a German manufacturer buying 200 tonnes a year through a trader pays 80,000 to 300,000 euros a year for the service. Whether that is good value depends on the buyer's volume, its appetite for paperwork and working capital, and its supplier-approval capacity, and the trade-off is worked through in Buying Dehydrated Onion via Dutch Traders or Direct from India. The route has one further consequence: the German buyer often does not know which plant dried its onion, since the trader's specification names the trader.

What a German importer needs before the first container

• An EORI number, issued by the Generalzolldirektion to any company that imports; free, online, a few days. The same number serves all EU customs declarations.
• A customs broker (Zollagent) or an ATLAS-capable forwarder, since filing an import declaration in ATLAS, the German customs system, requires certified software and most importers do not run it themselves; brokers charge 60 to 150 euros per declaration.
• A VAT arrangement for import VAT: paid at clearance and reclaimed in the next VAT return, or, for regular importers, deferred under the Zahlungsaufschub or handled by a fiscal representative when clearing through the Netherlands, so that the import VAT is not a cash outlay.
• Registration as a food business with the local Lebensmittelüberwachung, which every food company in Germany has; an importer is a Lebensmittelunternehmer under the general food law with the obligations that brings.
• A supplier approval file for the Indian supplier, since the importer is responsible for the food it places on the market and the state food authorities can ask for it.
• A warehouse that meets the hygiene rules for dry food storage, or a contracted logistics provider that does.
• Cargo insurance, per shipment or an annual open cover, unless buying CIF with Clauses (A).
• A specification and a contract with the supplier, in English, which is the language of the Indian trade.

None of it is difficult and a company that already imports any food has all of it; a manufacturer that has only ever bought from EU suppliers needs the EORI, the broker and the VAT arrangement, which take a few weeks. The wider EU rules the importer takes on are in EU Import Requirements for Dehydrated Onion.

Duty, import VAT and the customs value

The third-country duty on 0712 20 00 is 6.4 percent of the customs value, and the customs value is the CIF value at the EU border: goods, freight and insurance to the port of entry, regardless of the term the goods were bought on. Import VAT, Einfuhrumsatzsteuer, is charged at the reduced food rate of 7 percent on the customs value plus the duty, and is recoverable by a VAT-registered importer as input tax; it is a cash-flow item, not a cost, and the deferral arrangements above remove even the cash flow. There is no preferential rate for India on this line, no quota, and no anti-dumping measure; the EU-India free trade agreement was under negotiation in March 2026 and nothing from it applied. Excise does not apply. On a container of ten tonnes of flakes at a CIF value of 16,500 euros, duty is about 1,056 euros and import VAT about 1,229, the latter recovered.

Clearance in ATLAS: the steps

1. Before arrival, the carrier lodges the entry summary declaration under ICS2; the importer's broker receives the arrival notice from the carrier or the forwarder.
2. The broker prepares the import declaration in ATLAS from the commercial invoice, the packing list, the bill of lading, the certificate of origin and the importer's EORI, with the tariff line 0712 20 00, the customs value and the origin.
3. The declaration is lodged, usually before the vessel berths so that release follows discharge; customs assesses the duty and VAT and assigns a control decision: green, released on documents; or a document check or a physical examination, which for dried onion from India under the ordinary regime is a small share of consignments.
4. On release, duty is paid or deferred, the broker receives the release note, and the carrier releases the container against the original bill of lading or the telex release and payment of destination charges.
5. The container is collected by truck within the carrier's free days and delivered; the empty is returned.
6. The importer files the import VAT in its next return.

With documents checked before sailing, steps 2 to 4 take a day or two; a mismatch between the invoice weight and the bill of lading, a missing certificate of origin or an origin declaration that does not match the bag marking turns it into a week. The EU-wide clearance picture, with the codes and the timelines, is in Customs Clearance for Dehydrated Onion in the EU.

The documents

The set a German broker expects from the Indian exporter: the commercial invoice with the Incoterm, the tariff line, the origin, the lot numbers and the packaging weights; the packing list by pallet and lot; the bill of lading or seaway bill; the certificate of origin from an Indian chamber of commerce, non-preferential; the certificate of analysis per lot; the phytosanitary certificate, not legally required for dried onion but requested by most German importers as a matter of file completeness; the fumigation certificate for wooden pallets or the ISPM 15 stamp; the insurance certificate under CIF; and the supplier's declarations for allergens, additives, GMO, irradiation and ethylene oxide. German importers also ask for the plant's IFS or BRCGS certificate and a Produktspezifikation in German, which a good exporter supplies. The Indian side of the document set is in Export Documents for Dehydrated Onion from India.

Food-law checks: Lebensmittelüberwachung and the importer's file

Food surveillance in Germany is run by the sixteen Länder through their local authorities, and it is thorough: importers and manufacturers are inspected on a risk basis, samples are taken from the market and from warehouses, and the state laboratories run the residue, contaminant and microbiological analyses that the EU rules and the national programme require. For an importer of dried onion the practical consequences are three. The importer's supplier file, with the specification, the certificates, the declarations and its own verification results, must exist and be producible; an inspector who finds an importer relying on a supplier's certificate alone will say so. The importer must be able to trace every lot one step back and one step forward and to execute a withdrawal; the Länder test this. And a non-compliance found by a state laboratory, a residue above the MRL or an undeclared sulphite, goes into the national and then the EU rapid alert system, RASFF, with the importer's name attached. German importers therefore test more than most: a full analytical set on the first lots from a supplier, at a German accredited laboratory, and a plan thereafter, which is why a supplier's residue and contaminant history is asked for at approval. The German food and feed code, the LFGB, is the national frame under which the EU rules are enforced and adds no dried-onion-specific requirements; the residue rules that matter most are in Pesticide Residues in Dehydrated Onion.

Hamburg or Rotterdam: the entry point

A German importer can clear at Hamburg, Bremerhaven or Wilhelmshaven, or at Rotterdam or Antwerp and move the goods to Germany afterward. Hamburg is the natural choice for northern and eastern Germany, with direct services from India, German customs and a German broker, and a truck to most of the country in a day; Bremerhaven serves the northwest similarly. Rotterdam and Antwerp are the choice for western and southern Germany and for importers who use a Dutch or Belgian forwarder with a fiscal representative, under which the import VAT is handled in the Netherlands under its deferral scheme and the goods move to Germany as an intra-EU supply, which removes the German import VAT cash flow entirely; the Rhine and the motorways make Rotterdam to the Ruhr a day's transit. Freight rates from India to the four ports are close; the choice turns on the buyer's location, its forwarder and its VAT preference. The lane itself, with transit times and the routing question, is in Pipavav to Hamburg.

Language, culture and how German buyers work

The Indian export trade works in English, and every Mahuva plant and exporter corresponds, specifies and invoices in English; a German buyer's purchasing and quality staff use English with Indian suppliers as a matter of course, and the German-language documents a buyer needs, the product data sheet, the label content and the safety data, are produced on the German side or by an exporter that has invested in them. What German buyers expect in the relationship is punctuality, completeness and directness: a reply within a working day, a document set that is complete the first time, a specification with numbers rather than adjectives, a quote with the Incoterm and the validity stated, and a supplier who says when something cannot be done rather than promising and missing. The phrase KlarHarvest uses for it, from the founder's twelve years of building software for European companies, is that a German client wants to be told the truth early; the same applies to onion. Public holidays, the summer break in August and the week between Christmas and New Year slow German purchasing, and an exporter plans shipments around them. The trading culture on the Indian side, and how to read it, is in How to Import Dehydrated Onion from India.

Direct from India: what it saves and what it costs

The saving is the trader's margin less the importer's own costs, which for a manufacturer using 100 tonnes a year is 40,000 to 120,000 euros a year against perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 of broker fees, testing and staff time; below 30 to 50 tonnes a year the trader's convenience usually wins, unless the buyer wants the plant identity for its own customers' audits. A middle route, an Indian exporter with EU-style service, four-hour responses, a lot record per shipment, German-language documents and pallet or LCL delivery to the door, narrows the convenience gap while keeping most of the price gap, and is the model KlarHarvest is built on. The first-import sequence for a buyer going direct is in From Sample to First Container.

A worked container landed in Germany

Ten tonnes of white onion flakes, standard tier, 20-foot container, CIF Hamburg, to a manufacturer 150 kilometres from the port, March 2026.

The importer's own warehouse handling, the working capital for six to eight weeks and the staff time for the file are on top of the 1.89, and even with those the direct route lands well under the trader's price at container volume. The build from the plant gate to this figure is in Landed Cost of Dehydrated Onion in Europe, and the Incoterm choices that shape it in FOB, CIF or DAP?

What German buyers ask at supplier approval

A German manufacturer's Lieferantenfreigabe, the supplier approval, follows a pattern that an Indian exporter should be ready for before the first sample is tasted, because the file is read before the product. The questionnaire, usually a form of ten to twenty pages, asks for the legal entity and its registrations, the plant's GFSI certificate and the audit report's summary, the HACCP plan's critical control points, the allergen management statement in matrix form, the specification with numbers for every parameter, the analytical history for residues, contaminants and microbiology over the last year, the declarations on GMO, irradiation, ethylene oxide, sulphite and nanomaterials, the packaging's food-contact declaration of compliance, the traceability system and a mock recall exercise, the ethical and social audit position, increasingly a SMETA or equivalent, the environmental and sustainability statement, and the crisis contacts. Many now add a supplier code of conduct to sign and a request for the plant's water and energy data. The German twist is that all of it is expected to be complete and consistent at the first submission; a file that arrives in three instalments with a certificate that has expired between them is a mark against the supplier that a good sample does not erase. A Produktspezifikation in German, and a Sicherheitsdatenblatt where the buyer's system demands one even for a food, are the two documents most often missing from an Indian exporter's pack, and the exporters that serve Germany well have them. The approval process from the buyer's side is in IFS and BRC Supplier Approval, and the vetting the buyer runs in parallel is in 25-Point Checklist Before You Choose a Dehydrated Onion Supplier.

Germany's regions: where the buyers are

Germany's food industry is regional, and the dried-onion buyers cluster where their sectors do. The soup and dry-mix manufacturers sit in the north and west, around Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony and the Rhineland, and clear through Hamburg or Rotterdam. The meat industry is spread but weighted toward the northwest, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, with the large sausage makers in the south too, in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, who clear through Rotterdam or Antwerp and truck up the Rhine. The spice and seasoning companies are concentrated in Hamburg, historically the port of the spice trade, and around Stuttgart and Nuremberg. Retail private-label packers are in the west and south, near the retailers' distribution centres. Snack manufacturers sit in the west and in the east around Leipzig. The practical consequence for an exporter is that "Germany" is two logistics problems: a northern one served best through Hamburg and Bremerhaven with a German broker, and a western and southern one served best through Rotterdam or Antwerp with a Dutch or Belgian forwarder and a truck; a DAP quote to a buyer near Munich and one to a buyer near Hamburg differ by 200 to 400 euros a container in on-carriage, and a supplier who quotes one landed price for all of Germany has got one of them wrong. The lane and the gateways are in Pipavav to Hamburg.

Austria and Switzerland from the same shipment

German-speaking buyers in Austria and Switzerland source from the same Dutch traders and the same Indian exporters, and a shipment to Germany often continues to them. Austria is in the EU and the customs union: goods cleared in Germany or the Netherlands move to Austria as an intra-EU supply with no further duty, Austrian VAT accounted for by the Austrian buyer under the reverse charge, and the Austrian food authorities enforcing the same EU rules; an Austrian buyer can also clear directly at Koper or Trieste, the Adriatic ports that the India services reach a week earlier than Hamburg, which is the route for southern Austria and Bavaria too. Switzerland is outside the EU customs union: goods enter under Swiss customs with Swiss duty, which for dried onion is a modest specific duty per 100 kilograms rather than a percentage, Swiss VAT at the reduced food rate, and Swiss food law, which mirrors the EU's for most parameters with its own ordinances; the practical route is a Swiss forwarder clearing at Basel from a container discharged at Rotterdam or Antwerp. Both countries' buyers expect the German-language documents that the German market does, and both are served by the same KlarHarvest contact, listed on the contact page; the wider EU rules that apply in Austria are in EU Import Requirements for Dehydrated Onion.

How KlarHarvest serves German buyers

Germany is one of KlarHarvest's main markets, and the service suits its buyers: the founder's twelve years of work for European clients, a German-language version of the site at klarharvest.com/de with the same specifications and lot records as the English site, product data sheets and declarations in German, a one-business-day response commitment, CIF Hamburg and DAP-to-door quotes with landed cost shown, pallet and LCL delivery for buyers below container volume, and a lot record per shipment that names the BRCGS-certified plant, the drying date and the NABL laboratory report, which is what a German supplier approval and a Länder inspector both want to see. The contact for German-speaking buyers is listed on the contact page, and the process from sample to delivery on the our process page.

Frequently asked questions

How much dried onion does Germany import?

About 21,000 tonnes a year, the most of any country, worth around 60 million dollars. Roughly 13,000 tonnes come directly from India and the rest via Dutch and Belgian traders, nearly all of it Indian in origin.

What is the import duty on dehydrated onion in Germany?

6.4 percent of the CIF value under tariff line 0712 20 00, plus import VAT at the reduced food rate of 7 percent, which a VAT-registered importer recovers. No quota and no preferential rate for India.

What do I need to import dried onion into Germany?

An EORI number, a customs broker or ATLAS-capable forwarder, a VAT arrangement for import VAT, registration as a food business, a supplier approval file, a dry-food warehouse and cargo insurance unless buying CIF.

Is a health or phytosanitary certificate required?

Not by law for dried onion from India, which is not listed for increased controls as of March 2026. Most German importers still ask for a phytosanitary certificate for the file, and exporters supply it.

Should I clear at Hamburg or Rotterdam?

Hamburg for northern and eastern Germany with German customs and a German broker; Rotterdam or Antwerp for western and southern Germany, often with a fiscal representative so that import VAT is handled in the Netherlands.

Why is Dutch-supplied onion more expensive than direct from India?

The trader's margin of 0.40 to 1.50 euros per kilogram pays for stock in Europe, an EU invoice, working capital and quality risk. At 50 tonnes a year and up, importing directly usually saves more than the paperwork costs.

Do Indian suppliers work in German?

The trade works in English. A few exporters, KlarHarvest among them, provide German-language data sheets, declarations and a German website; contracts and certificates remain in English.

Next step

Request a quote with your location and the cut, and it comes with CIF Hamburg and DAP-to-door side by side, the landed cost in Germany and the German-language data sheet; or request a sample first, and the supplier-approval pack comes with it.