What the border costs: the charges that sit outside the price and the freight
Every guide to importing flowers tells you about duty. Almost none tells you about the rest — two separate agencies charging at origin, a per-kilogram inspection, a levy on value, and a fixed charge at the destination levied whether or not anyone opens a box. They are individually small. What matters is that they are built five different ways across the destinations on this site, and that decides which of them punish a small order and which punish a good one.
The charges, in the order your consignment meets them
These are published, statutory figures, each taken from the authority that sets it. Every one of them is also on the page that deals with that regime in full, linked at each step.
At origin — Kenya, and it is two agencies, not one
This is the part most often got wrong, including in an earlier version of this page. Kenyan export charges come from two separate authorities under two separate instruments, and they are charged on entirely different bases.
The Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service — the phytosanitary side, charged by certificate and by weight:
| Charge | Amount |
|---|---|
| Phytosanitary certificate, fresh produce | KES 500 |
| Fresh produce inspection | 50 cents per kg, minimum KES 100, plus the KES 500 certificate |
| Inspection at a port of entry or exit, Nairobi | KES 1,000 |
| Agricultural export products, per consignment declared for export | KES 5,000 |
Set by the Plant Protection (Fees and Charges) Rules, and cross-checked against a December 2025 High Court judgment that quotes the same figures independently. The full picture, including what these do and do not cover, is on the KEPHIS page.
The Agriculture and Food Authority — a different instrument, and critically a charge on value:
| Charge | Amount |
|---|---|
| Export levy | 0.25% of customs value, per consignment |
| Export licence fee | KES 10,000, annual |
| Pack house registration | KES 5,000, annual |
| Inspection for produce conformity | KES 1,000 per inspection |
Set by the Crops (Horticultural Crops) Regulations, whose charging provision applies the levy "on all horticultural crops destined for export". The annual items are the exporter's standing costs rather than yours, but the levy is per consignment and moves with value. Why this matters when comparing two quotations is set out on the quotation page.
Do not add the two agencies together into a single "Kenyan export cost". They are separate charges under separate instruments, they are charged on different bases, and a quotation that merges them tells you nothing about which one moves when the price does.
At the destination — all every destination on this site this site covers
| Market | The charge | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Great Britain | £7.64 per consignment — documentary, identity and physical checks combined. £147.35 per laboratory sample if one is taken | Per consignment, charged whether or not the consignment is opened. Scotland charges on a different basis |
| European Union | EUR 7 documentary · EUR 7–14 identity · EUR 17.50 plant health for cut flowers up to 20,000 stems, capped at EUR 140 | Per check actually performed. Annex IV amounts; a member state may charge its own cost instead |
| Netherlands | EUR 4.16 documentary check per consignment · where physically inspected, a EUR 66.56 start fee plus EUR 2.08 per minute (KCB, from 1 August 2026) | Per check, then per minute. The EU's per-check structure as one member state executes it: the inspector's time is on the invoice |
| Australia | A$48 per import declaration, air cargo, from 1 July 2026. Inspection charged separately, in 15 and 30-minute units per officer, loaded out of hours | Per declaration, plus time-based inspection |
| Saudi Arabia | 5% duty, then 15% VAT on the duty-inclusive value — an effective 20.75% | Ad valorem |
| United Arab Emirates | 5% duty, then 5% VAT on a duty-inclusive base — an effective 10.25% | Ad valorem |
| United States | No plant health fee published. APHIS bears the inspector during regular hours at the usual place of duty; the importer bears every additional cost of inspection, treatment, movement, storage or destruction an inspector orders | Per event, as ordered — nothing on the invoice until something is found |
United Kingdom · European Union · Australia · Saudi Arabia · United Arab Emirates
Two neighbours, two philosophies. Great Britain and the European Union inspect Kenyan roses at the same 25% and charge for it in opposite ways. Great Britain bills a flat £7.64 on every consignment whether or not it is opened — its own explanation is that a blanket charge gives businesses certainty. The European Union prices each check separately, so an uninspected consignment pays the documentary fee and little else, while an inspected one reaches roughly EUR 31.50–38.50. Same likelihood of being opened; different bill depending on whether you were.
The part that matters: they are built five different ways
The fifth, and the newest on this site, is the absence of a fee. The United States publishes no plant health charge: APHIS bears the inspector during regular hours at the usual place of duty, and the importer bears whatever an inspector orders — nothing on the invoice until something is found. The United States lane →
This is the reason the page exists. Read as a list, the numbers above are trivia. Read as structures, they tell you something you can act on.
A fixed per-consignment charge does not care how much you ship. £7.64 into Great Britain is £7.64 whether the entry covers one box or forty. So its weight per stem falls as the order grows, and it falls fast. The same is true of Australia's A$48 per declaration and of the KES 500 per certificate. These charges punish the small trial order — which is worth knowing precisely because a first order is usually a small one, and because the cost you measure on a trial is not the cost you will carry at volume.
A per-kilogram charge is close to neutral. KEPHIS inspection at 50 cents per kilogram costs the same per stem whether you ship ten boxes or a hundred. It scales with you and neither rewards nor penalises size.
A per-check charge depends on something you do not control. The European Union prices the documentary, identity and plant health checks separately, so what you pay depends on which checks actually happen. The Netherlands shows what that looks like at one entry point: KCB charges EUR 4.16 for the documentary check and, only if the consignment is opened, a start fee and a per-minute rate — the inspector's minutes are on the invoice. An uninspected consignment pays little; an inspected one reaches roughly EUR 31.50–38.50. It is the only one of these structures whose cost is decided at the border rather than on the invoice — and the EU's plant health fee for cut flowers is effectively flat at EUR 17.50, because reaching its EUR 140 cap would take around nine hundred thousand stems in one consignment.
An ad valorem charge behaves differently from all of them, and there are three here. Kenya's AFA export levy at 0.25% of customs value, the UAE's effective 10.25% and Saudi Arabia's effective 20.75% are percentages of what the goods are worth. None falls as the order grows, and all three rise when the flowers get better. A longer stem with a larger head is a more valuable stem, and a fixed percentage of a larger number is a larger number.
The practical consequence, stated plainly. Upgrading your specification — longer stems, larger heads, a premium variety — moves the ad valorem charges and leaves the rest untouched. The Kenyan export levy moves on every consignment to every destination, but at 0.25% it is a rounding line. The Gulf rates are not, and Saudi Arabia's 20.75% is the largest single charge anywhere on this page. Into Great Britain, the European Union and Australia the specification decision and the destination charges are effectively independent of each other; into Saudi Arabia and the UAE they are not. That is not a reason to buy shorter stems. It is a reason to run the arithmetic on the landed figure rather than the ex-farm one before assuming a premium line prices the same way in every market.
A correction, and it is ours. An earlier version of this page listed only the phytosanitary charges at origin and concluded that the Saudi duty and VAT were, in its words, "unlike every other charge on this page" in rising with specification. That was wrong, and it was wrong because the page was incomplete — Kenya's own export levy is charged on value too, and had been set out on the quotation page all along. The structural point survives; the claim that only one charge behaved that way did not.
What these charges are not
Two of the structures above now have pages of their own: the European Union's per-check minimums, and how the Netherlands executes them by the minute, and the customs codes every rate on this page hangs on.
They are not a landed cost, and they are not close to one.
On this lane freight is the dominant line, not the border. £7.64 against a consignment worth hundreds is close to immaterial, and the same is true of A$48. Do not let the presence of a table here suggest these numbers drive your economics — they do not. What actually moves the price is set out on the pricing page, and the short version is that airfreight on a Kenya lane can rival the value of the flowers themselves.
And the real exposure at a border is usually time, not money. Cut roses have a working life measured in days. A charge you can calculate in advance is a manageable thing; a consignment held while a question is resolved is not. That is the line to plan around, and it is on each market page rather than this one.
What is still open, and why no total appears
There is no total on this page, deliberately.
- The number that would make a total meaningful is how often you are inspected, and that is published for Great Britain — roughly one Kenyan rose consignment in four is physically opened — but not published for Australia in any origin-specific form we could find.
- Australia's individual inspection rates are published and we are not reproducing them. They appear in the department's schedule against charge points we could not match with certainty, and a fee attributed to the wrong charge point is worse than no fee at all.
- Great Britain publishes no inspection turnaround time we have located, so the cost of a delay cannot be estimated from anything official.
- Australia's charging is moving. Most biosecurity charges rose 3.8% on 1 July 2026, and a phased restructure of diagnostic charging has Phase 2 expected on 1 November 2026.
- Several of these are per-consignment charges, and a shipment can attract more than one line. Adding them without knowing your entry structure would produce a number that looks precise and is not.
A total built on those unknowns would be an estimate wearing a statistic's clothes. The figures above are each individually verifiable against the authority that sets them, which is the useful thing we can offer.
What to ask
- Which of these charges is in the quotation and which is not? A quoted price that includes the phytosanitary certificate and one that does not are not comparable.
- Who is the importer of record, and who therefore pays the destination charges? This follows from your trading terms rather than from the border. Incoterms for airfreighted flowers sets out the framework.
- How many entries will my order be split across? Per-consignment charges multiply with entries, not with volume.
- For Saudi Arabia specifically: has the landed arithmetic been run at the specification I actually want, rather than at a standard one?
On these figures, and on what a comparison like this can honestly do
Every figure on this page is a published statutory charge, taken from the authority that sets it and stated with the date it was checked. None is an estimate, an average or a quotation. What this page does not do is add them up. A total would need an inspection frequency for each market, an entry structure for your particular shipment, and a stable fee schedule — and Australia publishes no origin-specific inspection rate we could locate, Great Britain publishes no inspection turnaround, and Australian charges are mid-restructure. The comparison offered here is structural rather than arithmetical: how each charge behaves as your order grows and as your specification improves. That is a real and checkable difference between the markets on this site. A landed cost is not, and we will not present one.
Ready to specify a requirement?
If you can state the product, stem length, head size, quantity, frequency and destination, we can give you a useful answer. If you cannot yet, say so on the form — every technical field has an “I don’t know yet, please advise” option.
Questions buyers ask about border charges
How much does it cost to get Kenyan flowers through customs?
There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one is estimating. What we can give you is the published charges. At origin there are two agencies: KEPHIS charges KES 500 per phytosanitary certificate plus 50 cents per kilogram inspection and, in Nairobi, KES 1,000, while the Agriculture and Food Authority charges an export levy of 0.25% of customs value per consignment. at destination, £7.64 per consignment into Great Britain, A$48 per air import declaration into Australia, and an effective 20.75% of value into Saudi Arabia. What turns those into a cost is how often you are inspected and how many entries your order is split across — and the inspection frequency is published for Great Britain but not, in origin-specific form, for Australia. So we publish the components and not a total.
Do these charges get cheaper if I order more?
Two of the four structures, yes — and two, no. Per-consignment charges — the UK's £7.64, Australia's A$48, the KES 500 certificate — are the same whether the entry covers one box or forty, so their weight per stem falls as the order grows. Per-kilogram charges, like KEPHIS inspection at 50 cents per kg, are neutral to size. Ad valorem charges do not fall at all: Kenya's AFA export levy at 0.25% of customs value, the UAE's effective 10.25% and Saudi Arabia's effective 20.75% are percentages of value, so they stay proportionally constant no matter how much you ship. And the EU's per-check pricing depends on which checks happen rather than on how much you send.
Does buying better flowers cost more at the border?
Two charges move with your specification, and only one of them matters much. Kenya's AFA export levy is 0.25% of customs value, so it rises with a more valuable stem on every consignment to every destination — but at that rate it is a rounding line. The Gulf rates are the ones that bite — Saudi Arabia's effective 20.75% and the UAE's 10.25%, because in both, duty and VAT are charged on a duty-inclusive value. The UK's £7.64 and Australia's A$48 are fixed per consignment and do not move with your specification at all. So into Great Britain and Australia the specification decision and the destination charges are effectively independent; into Saudi Arabia they are not. It is not a reason to specify down — it is a reason to run the landed arithmetic at the specification you actually want.
Is the £7.64 charged even if my consignment is not inspected?
Yes. In England and Wales the charge covers the documentary, identity and physical check components and is levied whether or not the consignment is opened. If a laboratory sample is taken on suspicion of a controlled pest, that is £147.35 per sample on top. Scotland charges on a different basis, which is why we state the England and Wales position rather than a single "UK" figure.
Why does this page not give a total landed cost?
Because the inputs that would make a total honest do not all exist. We would need an inspection frequency for each market — published for Great Britain, not published in origin-specific form for Australia — plus your entry structure, plus a settled fee schedule, and Australian charges are mid-restructure with a further phase expected 1 November 2026. Freight also dominates the economics on this lane far more than any of these charges do. A total built on that would look precise and would not be.
Last verified 25 September 2026
Sources
-
Plant Protection (Fees and Charges) Rules — Kenya, consolidated text
What we read
Gazetted statutory charges — phytosanitary certificate for fresh produce KES 500, fresh produce inspection 50 cents per kilogram with a minimum of KES 100, inspection at ports of entry or exit in Nairobi KES 1,000, and KES 5,000 per consignment of agricultural export products declared for export. Read from the consolidated structured text, as at 31 December 2022, and cross-checked against a High Court judgment of 17 December 2025 which quotes the same operative figures
-
Defra, UK Plant Health Information Portal — plant health check fees, England and Wales
What we read
The per-consignment charge of GBP 7.64 covering documentary, identity and physical check components, charged whether or not the consignment is opened, and GBP 147.35 per laboratory sample. Scotland charges on a different basis, which is why this page states the England and Wales position and does not generalise it to the United Kingdom
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Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry — Fees and charges for biosecurity and imported food regulatory activity 2026-27
What we read
The current legislated schedule, effective 1 July 2026. Cited for the full import declaration charge for air cargo at AUD 48, confirmed twice within the document, for the 3.8% indexation applied on 1 July 2026, for the structure of time-based inspection charging in 15 and 30-minute units per officer with out-of-hours and weekend loadings, and for the phased diagnostic charging restructure with Phase 2 expected 1 November 2026. Individual inspection rates are deliberately not reproduced, because the schedule sets them against charge points we could not match with certainty
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Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority — Saudi Arabia, customs duty and VAT on imports
What we read
Cut flowers carry a 5% customs duty, and VAT at 15% is charged on the duty-inclusive customs value, which compounds to an effective 20.75% rather than 20%. The arithmetic is set out in full on the Saudi Arabia market page
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Kenya Law — The Crops (Horticultural Crops) Regulations, L.N. 118/2020, Third Schedule and Regulation 33(1)
What we read
The Agriculture and Food Authority export levy at 0.25 per cent of customs value per consignment, quoted from the charging provision which applies it on all horticultural crops destined for export, together with the annual export licence fee, pack house registration and per-inspection conformity fee. Read from the consolidated text as at 31 December 2022. Added to this page on 25 September 2026 after a cross-page consistency check found that an earlier version of it set out only the phytosanitary charges at origin and therefore mis-stated which charges move with specification
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Regulation (EU) 2017/625 on official controls — Annex IV, and the UAE tax position
What we read
Article 79 makes fees mandatory and permits either the Annex IV amounts or cost under Article 82(1). Annex IV Chapter I section VIII - documentary checks EUR 7 per consignment, identity checks EUR 7 up to a truck, wagon or comparable container load and EUR 14 above, and plant health checks on cut flowers EUR 17.5 up to 20 000 stems plus EUR 0.14 per additional 1 000, capped at EUR 140. The UAE figures on this page are set out with their own sources on the United Arab Emirates market page - 5 per cent duty from Dubai Customs' tariff master and 5 per cent VAT on a duty-inclusive importation value under Articles 3 and 35 of Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017