Roughly a third of the people living in Jordan today were born somewhere else, and if you are buying for a supermarket group, a hotel business, or a restaurant chain here, that one statistic probably describes your customer base more accurately than any market report will.
Foreign nationals, including expatriates, immigrants and refugees, account for somewhere between 30% and 34% of the population, and they sit alongside a Jordanian middle class that travels, studies abroad, and shops with a clear preference for names it already recognises.
Add the hotels, resorts and restaurants serving visitors to Petra, Wadi Rum, the Dead Sea and Aqaba into the picture and you are supplying a market where British food and drink needs no introduction to anybody.
Total UK exports to Jordan reached £782 million across the four quarters to the end of 2025, and the food and drink portion of that figure is precisely the sort of product your customers keep asking you for. Leverbrook Export has been shipping British brands into Middle Eastern markets for close to five decades, and we take care of sourcing, labelling, paperwork and freight so that your side of it comes down to placing one order and taking one delivery.
Why British Brands Earn Their Place on Jordanian Shelves
Jordanian shoppers have become noticeably more brand-conscious over the past decade, and supermarket chains now serve as the main route to market for imported food, particularly among middle and upper income households across Amman. Younger customers buy internationally recognised names as a lifestyle choice rather than out of necessity, so a well-chosen British range gives you margin and differentiation that local and value lines will rarely deliver on their own.
Your hospitality customers are working to a different set of pressures, because international guests walk into your hotels and restaurants expecting a breakfast service, a bar list and a menu that matches what they are used to at home.
Jordan’s tourism sector keeps expanding across hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues, eco-tourism and resort holidays, alongside the conference and exhibition trade that keeps the larger Amman properties busy year-round, and each of those operations needs a dependable, planned supply of British product rather than an occasional shipment whenever somebody remembers to reorder.
What to Put in Your First British Food and Drink Export Order
The mix that works in Jordan tends to split along two lines, with everyday British staples that your international residents shop for weekly sitting on one side, and premium, gift-worthy, clearly branded lines that appeal to Jordanian shoppers trading up on the other. You will almost always get further with a tight selection of names your customers already know than with a broad catalogue of unfamiliar ones, so it pays to start narrow and let your own sales data widen the range for you.
The lines worth prioritising include:
- Tea, biscuits, preserves, sauces and ambient grocery staples that carry a British store cupboard and a British breakfast service.
- Established British brands that need no explaining to anyone who has lived, studied or holidayed in the UK.
- Premium confectionery and chocolate, which work hard across gifting occasions and hotel guest service alike.
- Free-from, gluten-free and healthier eating ranges, where imported product still runs well ahead of local supply.
- Chilled and frozen lines for hotel and foodservice kitchens, shipped under temperature control from our warehouse to yours.
Restrictions catch out fewer importers than you might expect, because the overwhelming majority of British finished food and drink products ship into Middle Eastern markets without difficulty, and the real considerations are labelling, certification and shelf life rather than the product itself. If you are unsure whether a category you want to stock will clear, ask us before you rule it out, because the answer is usually yes.
How Leverbrook Handles the Parts That Slow Importers Down
Importing from the UK gets complicated at the points where product, paperwork and freight all meet, and that is exactly where we take the work off your desk. You place a single order spanning dozens of British manufacturers, we consolidate it, label it, document it and ship it, and our full range of export services exists to keep your involvement down to the decisions that actually need you.
Arabic Labelling and Date Coding Handled Before Shipping
Jordan requires labelling and safety instructions in Arabic, and production and expiry dates must be printed on the original label or container by the manufacturer rather than added once your stock has landed, which is where importers buying from UK-only suppliers tend to come unstuck.
Our labelling and translation service covers Arabic translation in-house, applies bespoke labels suitable for ambient, chilled and frozen goods, and runs an ink jetting facility that prints production and expiry dates onto product before it leaves us. Sorting that at our end is what keeps your stock moving through to shelf instead of sitting somewhere while a labelling query gets resolved.
Consolidation and Sea Freight into Aqaba
Being able to order across many brands without committing to full container volumes is what makes a varied British range workable in the first place, and our consolidation service lets you combine multiple product lines onto a single pallet and ship from just one pallet upward. We offer it at cost to new and existing customers alike, which keeps your early orders low-risk while you work out what your own customers respond to.
Once your lines start turning, sea freight into Aqaba becomes the most economical way to keep them stocked, and we ship 20 foot, 40 foot and 40 foot high cube containers in dry, chilled or refrigerated configurations. Temperature is set at loading in our Wirral warehouse and held right through to arrival, with every container fully inspected and sealed before it goes.
Air Freight, Certification and Documentation
When a seasonal push, a tender, or a gap in your ordering leaves you short, air freight into Amman moves mixed pallets from 100 kg upward within days, and we carry it at cost with no margin taken, because getting you to market on time matters more to us than the freight does.
Your documentation comes from a shipping office working directly with our local chamber of commerce and the relevant embassies, covering certificates of origin for preferential treatment under the UK-Jordan association agreement, along with Halal, DEFRA and radiation certificates whenever your buyers or the authorities need them.
Sourcing British Food and Drink for Your Jordanian Business
The quickest way to find out whether a British range works for your business is to put a short, sharp selection in front of your own customers and watch what sells, and we would rather help you build that list properly than send you a catalogue and leave you to it.
Send over the categories you already stock, the gaps you find yourself apologising for, and the pack formats your operation needs, and we will come back with a shortlist, samples with no minimum order, and a freight route that suits how often you actually order.
Leverbrook Export has spent almost fifty years supplying British food and drink to importers across the Middle East, so Jordan sits well inside the territory we know best. Email info@leverbrook-export.co.uk or call +44 (0) 151 645 3517 and ask us to put a range proposal together for your business.