Dairy sits second on the list of British goods arriving in Lebanon, behind cars and ahead of every category of machinery on the manifest, which is unusual enough to be worth pausing over. Food rarely places that high in any country’s import profile from the UK, and it tells you a good deal about how seriously your customers take what ends up on their table.
Total UK exports to Lebanon came to £539 million across the four quarters to the end of 2025, with dairy products and eggs alone accounting for £27.7 million of that, and the trade has kept moving through everything the past few years have thrown at Lebanese business.
Leverbrook Export has spent close to fifty years supplying British food and drink across the region, and we handle the sourcing, certification, labelling and freight so that you are dealing with one supplier rather than thirty.
What Makes Lebanon Different From Its Neighbours
Your market does not run on expatriate demand the way most of the Gulf does, and it does not carry the category restrictions that shape a range elsewhere in the region either, which gives you room that importers a few hundred miles away simply do not have.
Lebanese consumers know food, judge it hard, and will pay for provenance in a way that very few markets this size manage, so you can build across the whole British catalogue rather than working around a list of exclusions.
Hospitality does a disproportionate share of the work here, because Beirut’s restaurant and café culture carries a genuine international reputation and the coastal and mountain hotel trade rises sharply through the summer months when the diaspora comes home.
Those returning customers grew up with, studied alongside or worked among British brands, which is a large part of why British food and drink travels so well into this region and why provenance does so much of your selling before a customer has picked anything up.
The British Categories That Perform Best in Lebanon
Dairy is the obvious starting point given how much of it your market already brings in, and British cheese in particular carries a story that a Lebanese menu or deli counter can actually use, from territorial and blue varieties through to the cheddars that anchor most foodservice specifications. Our chilled range covers cheese, butter, cream and dairy alongside the wider fresh categories, all of it moving under temperature control from our warehouse through to your cold store.
Beyond dairy, the categories worth building your range around include:
- British bakery lines, from breads and pastries through to cakes and gateau for hotel and patisserie accounts.
- Ambient store cupboard staples such as teas, biscuits, preserves, sauces and condiments.
- Premium confectionery and chocolate, which perform across both everyday retail and the gifting occasions your market takes seriously.
- Spirits, soft drinks and premium mixers for the on-trade and hotel bar lists.
- Free-from, gluten-free and healthier eating ranges, where imported product still leads local supply.
Very little of the British range presents a real problem at the border, and the overwhelming majority of finished food and drink products clear without difficulty once the paperwork and labelling are right. Your decisions are therefore commercial rather than regulatory, which means the useful question is what your customers will actually reorder rather than what you are permitted to bring in.
How Leverbrook Handles the Practical Side of Exportation
Importing from the UK becomes difficult at the points where cold chain, labelling and documentation all have to work together, and that combination is what we take on for you. Our export services exist so you can place one order across dozens of British manufacturers and receive one shipment, correctly certified, with the temperature held throughout.
Cold Chain Supply for Dairy and Chilled Ranges
Dairy leaves you no margin for error, so temperature is set when your goods are loaded at our Wirral warehouse and held right through to arrival, with every container fully inspected and sealed before it goes.
We ship 20 foot, 40 foot and 40 foot high cube containers by sea freight in dry, chilled or refrigerated configurations, and a refrigerated container running into Beirut or Tripoli remains the most economical way to keep a chilled programme in stock once your lines are turning predictably.
Labelling in Arabic and French, and the Paperwork Behind It
Business in Lebanon runs across Arabic and French as well as English, and your labelling needs to reflect that alongside the ingredient declarations and date coding your customs authorities and LIBNOR standards expect.
We translate and apply labels in-house across ambient, chilled and frozen goods, and print production and expiry dates onto product through our ink jetting facility before anything ships. Our shipping office works directly with our local chamber of commerce and the relevant embassies on certificates of origin, which matter here because the UK-Lebanon association agreement has been in force since January 2021 and preferential treatment depends on getting those certificates right.
Order Sizes That Suit How You Actually Pay
Trading terms in your market lean towards letters of credit and cash in advance until a relationship has proved itself, which makes committing to a full container on an untested range an expensive way to learn something.
Our consolidation service lets you combine many brands onto a single pallet and ship from one pallet upward at cost, and when a seasonal push or a short-dated gap leaves you exposed, air freight moves mixed pallets from 100 kg upward within days, also at cost with no margin taken.
Importing British Food and Drink to Lebanon With Leverbrook
Ask us to price a single pallet before you commit to anything larger, and put the result in front of your own customers rather than taking our word for how it will sell. Send over the brands your buyers keep asking for by name, the categories where you are currently short, and roughly how often you reorder, and we will come back with prices, availability and samples with no minimum order attached.
Almost five decades of shipping British food and drink has taught us that the range you end up with is rarely the one you started with, so we would rather help you find it than sell you a broad catalogue. Email your product list to info@leverbrook-export.co.uk, or call +44 (0) 151 645 3517 and we will price it up for you.