Importing Indonesian Tropical Plants
to Great Britain.
A regulatory and logistical roadmap for British plant shops, rare aroid collectors and commercial nurseries importing live flora from Indonesia. After Brexit, Great Britain runs its own plant health border: notifications are lodged in IPAFFS rather than TRACES-NT, and clearance happens at a Border Control Post designated for plants for planting. For standard bare-root stock for planting no individual advance import permit applies. The statutory conditions are professional-operator registration, an IPPC phytosanitary certificate, a CHED-PP lodged at least 4 working hours before the aircraft lands, and a clean taxon admissibility check.
Bare-root stock for planting; entry runs on professional-operator registration, retained Reg. 2016/2031 Art. 65(1)
Six P-designated airports, also Stansted, East Midlands and Glasgow; Birmingham is plant products only
IPAFFS notification at least 4 working hours before touchdown, S.I. 2023/1131 Reg. 10
Standard rate on ornamental plants; customs duty is 0.00% under S.I. 2020/1430
What the importer must have in place before dispatch
1. Registration as a professional operator. Commercial importers introducing regulated plants must be registered as a Professional Operator under retained Regulation (EU) 2016/2031, Article 65(1) and the Official Controls (Plant Health and Genetically Modified Organisms) (England) Regulations 2019, S.I. 2019/1517. In practice this means two things the buyer often treats as one: a GB Economic Operators Registration and Identification (EORI) number fromHMRC, and registration on theImport of Products, Animals, Food and Feed System (IPAFFS) using a Government Gateway ID. Completing IPAFFS registration enters the business onto the official register maintained by theAnimal and Plant Health Agency for England and Wales, or SASA for Scotland. The business name on the IPAFFS account must match the EORI registration, and a customs broker is linked through the IPAFFS Trade Partners dashboard if clearance is delegated.
2. No advance plant health permit — but do not mistake that for no paperwork. GB does not operate a general advance phytosanitary import-permit system for standard bare-root plants for planting from a non-EU third country. Entry is granted against the general conditions: the prohibitions and special requirements in Articles 40 and 41 of retained Regulation (EU) 2016/2031, a phytosanitary certificate required under Article 72, and the Annex 6 conditions as given effect by S.I. 2020/1527, together with operator registration, prior electronic notification, and border clearance. Buyers who have imported into the United States and hold a USDA APHIS PPQ 587 permit should note that no UK equivalent exists for this category.
3. A UK CITES import permit, if the line is a listed taxon. Most traded orchids, cycads and Nepenthes are Appendix II (UK Annex B) and need a permit issued by APHA Bristol on Form FED0172, held in physical possession before the consignment leaves Indonesia. Appendix I (UK Annex A) taxa also occur within those groups — Paphiopedilum spp., Phragmipedium spp. and several cycads among them — and take a stricter route, with a certificate of artificial propagation where the plants are nursery-grown; commercial trade in wild-collected Appendix I specimens is prohibited. Foliaria supplies the matching Indonesian export permit from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry for artificially propagated plants. This is covered in full in the CITES section below.
4. A realistic view of the duty and VAT position. The declaration is made under heading 0602, other live plants including their roots, cuttings and slips, with 0602.90.70.00 covering rooted cuttings and young plants and 0602.90.99.10 or 0602.90.99.90 covering other live ornamental foliage plants. Customs duty on that heading is 0.00 per cent under the Customs Tariff (Establishment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, S.I. 2020/1430. Indonesia is a designated beneficiary country under the Developing Countries Trading Scheme in the Standard Preferences tier, enacted by S.I. 2023/561, and the preferential rate for live plants under HS 0602 is also 0.00 per cent — so the preference does not reduce anything on this heading, and no duty arises whether or not it is claimed. Import VAT at the standard 20 per cent rate is the real cash cost at the border, charged on the CIF value plus duty and fees, and a non-VAT-registered buyer pays it at release and cannot reclaim it as input tax.
Clearance sequence, in the order it happens
Before ordering — EORI, IPAFFS registration, CITES permit
The importer obtains a GB EORI number and registers on IPAFFS, which enrols the business as a professional operator with APHA. Allow roughly 5 to 10 working days, and treat it as a one-off setup rather than a per-shipment task. Where the order includes CITES taxa, the FED0172 application goes to APHA Bristol at the same time, because the permit has to exist before dispatch. Foliaria confirms the taxon against the Great Britain prohibited and restricted lists before quoting a line.
Before dispatch — Barantan inspection and phytosanitary certificate
Roots are washed free of all soil and growing media, the consignment is prepared and presented to Barantan, Badan Karantina Indonesia, and the official IPPC phytosanitary certificate is issued after inspection. The certificate must be issued no more than 13 days before or 13 days after the date the consignment leaves Indonesia; the goods do not have to arrive inside that window, but issuance must fall within it.
At least 4 working hours before touchdown — CHED-PP notification
The importer or their UK customs broker lodges the pre-notification in IPAFFS at least 4 working hours before the aircraft lands in Great Britain (S.I. 2023/1131, Regulation 10; retained Regulation (EU) 2017/625, Article 56). The submission creates a CHED-PP with a reference in the format CHEDPP.GB.YYYY.NNNNNNN, and the scanned phytosanitary certificate is uploaded with it. That reference, the declared net weight and the 10-digit commodity code go to the broker for the customs declaration.
On arrival — PHSI inspection at a P-designated Border Control Post
The airline handler delivers the freight to the Border Control Post inspection facility, where the APHA Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate carries out documentary, identity and physical checks. All plants for planting are High Risk under the Border Target Operating Model, so this is a 100 per cent check with no reduced-frequency easement. The statutory fees are £5.25 documentary, £1.57 identity and £32.15 physical per consignment line, a baseline of £38.97, with the handler's commercial charges on top.
Release — HMRC customs clearance, separate from plant health
The broker lodges the import declaration through the Customs Declaration Service (CDS), which replaced CHIEF, and HMRC matches the declaration against the CHED-PP through the Automatic Licence Verification System. Plant health clearance does not clear customs, and the two run in parallel rather than in sequence. The declaration uses heading 0602, other live plants including their roots, cuttings and slips: 0602.90.70.00 for rooted cuttings and young plants, and 0602.90.99.10 or 0602.90.99.90 for other live ornamental foliage plants such as Monstera, Philodendron, Alocasia and Anthurium. Import VAT at 20 per cent falls due at or before release, calculated on the CIF value — invoice, air freight and cargo insurance — plus any duty and import fees. Where the phytosanitary certificate was issued on paper, the physical original must be posted to APHA in York within 3 days of arrival, or to SASA in Edinburgh for arrivals in Scotland.
Taxa Foliaria does not ship into Great Britain
The lists below are the ones that decide whether a line can be quoted at all. Admissibility is confirmed per genus and per cultivar before an invoice is issued, never assumed from the family.
Soil and growing media — prohibited outright. Soil consisting in whole or in part of solid organic substances is prohibited from all non-EU third countries, and so is growing medium attached to or associated with plants, other than 100 per cent unused sterile peat or unused coconut coir free of pests (retained Regulation (EU) 2019/2072, Annex 6, Part A, Items 19 and 20, as given effect by S.I. 2020/1527). Every consignment therefore leaves as washed bare root, packed in clean paper, dry wood shavings or washed sterile synthetic media rather than compost.
Standing prohibitions on plants for planting. Under retained Regulation (EU) 2019/2072, Annex 6, Part A, as given effect by S.I. 2020/1527, live plants for planting of Solanaceae other than seeds, of Citrus, Fortunella, Poncirus and their hybrids, of conifers with foliage, of Prunus other than dormant plants without leaves, flowers or fruit, and of Phoenix species from countries where palm lethal yellowing phytoplasmas occur, are prohibited from introduction into Great Britain from non-European third countries. These are permanent entries in the schedule, not provisional measures.
High-risk genera — provisional ban pending pest risk analysis. Under retained Regulation (EU) 2016/2031, Article 42 and retained Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/2019, a provisional import ban applies to a list of high-risk plants for planting until a pest risk analysis is completed by the exporting country and accepted by Defra. The list includes Acer, Aesculus, Alnus, Betula, Carpinus, Castanea, Cornus, Corylus, Crataegus, Diospyros, Fagus, Fraxinus, Juglans, Ligustrum, Lonicera, Malus, Nerium, Platanus, Populus, Prunus, Quercus, Salix, Sorbus, Taxus, Tilia, Ulmus and Ullucus tuberosus.
Palms carry a declaration requirement, not a ban. Arecaceae may be imported bare-root only where the phytosanitary certificate carries additional declarations confirming freedom from Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, the red palm weevil, and Paysandisia archon, under S.I. 2020/1527, Annex 7, Part A. Without those declarations on the certificate the line cannot clear, so the declaration wording is agreed before Barantan issues the document.
What is permitted. The tropical foliage genera Foliaria exports are not caught by Annex 6 or Article 42: Monstera, Philodendron, Anthurium, Alocasia, Rhaphidophora, Epipremnum, Scindapsus, Aglaonema, Syngonium and Amorphophallus in Araceae; Hoya and Dischidia in Apocynaceae; and the ferns Platycerium, Asplenium and Nephrolepis. All remain subject to the phytosanitary certificate and the 100 per cent border inspection.
CITES: the one permit that must exist before shipping
The United Kingdom operates an independent CITES regime under retained Council Regulation (EC) No 338/97 and the Control of Trade in Endangered Species Regulations 2018, S.I. 2018/1022. The Management Authority is the APHA Centre for International Trade at Bristol, and the Scientific Authority for plants is the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
For Appendix II taxa — which covers most commercially traded Orchidaceae, Cycadaceae and Nepenthes, listed in UK Annex B — an import needs both an Indonesian CITES export permit issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, and a UK CITES Import Permit issued by APHA Bristol on Form FED0172. The application fee is £74.00 per plant import permit, plus £1.50 per additional species sheet. The standard service lead time is a minimum of 15 working days, and up to 30 working days where the application is referred to Kew for scientific non-detriment review.
Appendix I taxa (UK Annex A) also occur within these groups — Paphiopedilum spp., Phragmipedium spp. and several cycads among them — and follow a stricter route. The import permit is issued against an Appendix I finding, nursery-grown plants need a certificate of artificial propagation, and commercial trade in wild-collected Appendix I specimens is prohibited. The appendix is therefore checked at species level before an order is accepted, because it determines which documents the permit is issued against.
The permit must be formally issued and in the importer's physical possession before the consignment departs Indonesia. Retrospective permits are not available under UK law, so a CITES line ordered without a permit in hand will not ship. At the border, UK Border Force inspects the consignment at a designated CITES point of entry and wet-stamps Box 27 of the UK import permit and the Indonesian export permit; Border Force keeps the green customs copy and returns the yellow copy to the importer as proof of import.
Artificially propagated plants are not exempt. Commercial nursery stock, source code A, still needs both permits, including greenhouse-propagated orchids and cycads. The one exception is in vitro plantlet cultures in sterile transparent containers, which fall outside CITES documentation under Annotation #4. Bare-root rooted plants do not qualify for that flask exemption, which is the form in which Foliaria ships.
Six airports, one notification system
Live plants for planting can only enter Great Britain through a Border Control Post approved for category P under retained Regulation (EU) 2017/625, Article 64. The air Border Control Posts holding that designation are London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Manchester, London Stansted, East Midlands and Glasgow. Birmingham is approved for plant products only, so a consignment of live plants routed there cannot legally clear and has to be moved on.
Heathrow is the deepest option, with several approved inspection facilities, and is the usual entry point for air freight from South East Asia. Gatwick, Manchester and East Midlands cover the south, the north-west and the Midlands; Stansted and Glasgow matter mainly for buyers in the east and in Scotland. Foliaria books to whichever of these the importer nominates, and the inspection facility is confirmed at booking because it, rather than the airport code, determines where the freight is presented.
Air transit from East Java to a UK Border Control Post depends on the carrier and routing, and it is not a fixed commitment; inspection and customs queues can extend the total. Inspection runs on the day of arrival or the following day, and release typically follows within one to two days. The notification deadline is measured from touchdown, not from booking, so a delayed or re-routed flight does not create a second window — the CHED-PP has to be lodged before the aircraft lands either way.
None of this replaces the importer's own obligations. A GB EORI number, an IPAFFS account and, for listed taxa, a CITES permit in hand are the buyer's work, and they are checked by the authorities against the consignment rather than against the seller. What Foliaria controls is the bare-root preparation, the Barantan certification and the routing to a P-designated airport.
British Import Questions, Answered
Do I need an import permit to import plants from Indonesia to Great Britain?↓
What is the deadline for the IPAFFS pre-notification?↓
Which UK airports can clear live plants for planting?↓
Is every consignment inspected, and what does the inspection cost?↓
Do orchids, cycads and Nepenthes need a UK CITES permit?↓
What import VAT and customs duty apply to the consignment?↓
What happens if the phytosanitary certificate is issued on paper?↓
How long does the whole process take?↓
Ready to Import into Great Britain?
Review our wholesale export catalog of Indonesian tropical houseplants and rare aroids. We confirm taxon admissibility against the Great Britain prohibited and restricted lists before an invoice is issued, and we quote the CITES position per line. Minimum wholesale consignment is 20 plants.