I. Which foods must be entrusted to a professional agency company for export?

According to the latest international trade rules in 2025, the following three types of foods are recommended to be mandatorily entrusted to a professional agency:

• Special - regulated foods
  • Infant formula milk powder (requiring registration of overseas production enterprises with the General Administration of Customs)
  • Health - functional foods (requiring certification by the FDA of the target country or an equivalent agency)
  • Irradiated foods (requiring the provision of irradiation treatment certification documents)
• High - risk perishable foods
  • Fresh dairy products (requiring full - process cold - chain logistics)
  • Chilled aquatic products (requiring a health certificate and a fishing certificate)
  • Ready - to - eat prepared foods (with strict microbiological testing requirements)
• Categories involving intellectual property protection
  • Geographical indication products (such as French champagne, Italian Parma ham)
  • Patented - formula foods (requiring the provision of intellectual property authorization documents)

II. How to choose between self - export and agency - export? It is recommended that enterprises evaluate from three dimensions:

Completeness of qualifications

• Take the export of seasonings to the EU as an example, it is necessary to have simultaneously:

  HACCP certification (new FSMA compliance requirements added in 2025)

  • Non - GMO certification (for soybean products, etc.)
  • E-number food additive registration
  • Cost - control ability
• Case of a nut exporter: The annual maintenance cost of a self - built overseas warehouse is about $1.2 million, and the agency - shared warehouse model can save 67%

  Risk - tolerance threshold

• In 2023, a tea enterprise had a whole container seized due to non - compliance of labels with new FDA regulations, with a loss of over $300,000

  III. Core service content of professional food agents

Compliance services

• US FDA food facility registration (updated every even - numbered year)
  • Compliance review of Japans Positive List System
  • EU TRACES system cargo pre-declaration
  • Logistics optimization plan
• Logistics Optimization Plan

  1. A certain frozen food enterprise, through an agents2. multimodal transport solution3., has increased the transportation timeliness by 40% and reduced the loss rate to 1.2%

• 4. Tariff planning services

  5. Food exports to RCEP member states can enjoy a maximum tariff reduction of 12%, and professional HS code classification is required

6. IV. 5 Precautions for Selecting FoodExport agent7.

• 8. Check the agency company9. Entry and exitInspection of vaccines10. Record number
• 11. Confirm whether it has12. a cold chain logistics monitoring system
• Request to provide13. Export cases of the same category14. (such as the condiment export case to Southeast Asia in 2024)
• clearly15. Division of liability for quality accidents16. (especially in cases of microbial over - standard, etc.)
• 17. Verification18. OverseasCustoms clearanceCapacity19. (Some countries require local licensed customs clearance)

20. V. 2025 FoodExport agent21. Reference Standard for Fees

22. The regular agency rate is 3 - 8% of the cargo value, specifically depending on:

• 23. The complexity of certification documents (for example, an additional 1.5% is charged for Halal certification)
• 24. Special packaging requirements (EU EPR packaging law compliance costs)
• 25. The risk level of the target market (African countries generally increase a risk control fee of 0.5 - 1%)