Exporting to Switzerland. An hour's drive away, and a different continent in practice.

Switzerland borders Italy, speaks Italian among other languages, and is happy to buy Italian products. And in customs terms, it's still a non-EU country, just like Brazil.

This guide covers food in general. For two products the route changes before the country even comes into it: wine travels with excise duty and its accompanying document, and olive oil has marketing and labelling rules all of its own. If you export either to Switzerland, read this guide and the one for your product. The market detail is in wine in Switzerland and its quota and olive oil in Switzerland and the compulsory stockpile.

This piece is part of the guide to export operations for small food producers and opens the series on individual markets. If you first need to know who pays for freight and duties, the answer is in Incoterms: who pays for what.

The template, to download

One file, two sheets. The first is the checklist of steps a shipment to Switzerland goes through, with the source next to each row. The second takes the net weight, packaging and cartons, works out the gross weight Swiss customs charges duty on, then import VAT at 2.6%, and shows what it all adds up to per unit.

File	Contents	Link
SwitzerlandExcel, two sheets	Fourteen checklist rows with sources, and the calculation of duty on gross weight and VAT at 2.6% per unit.	svizzera-checklist-dazio-peso-lordo-en.xlsx

The files are free. There's no form in the way, we don't ask for an email address, and we don't get notified when anyone downloads them. The rate for your tariff heading isn't in the sheet, deliberately: it varies by product category, and you look it up in the Swiss electronic customs tariff using your product's code.

Exporting to Switzerland from Italy: it's a non-EU country

Exporting to Switzerland from Italy means exporting outside the EU. You need the customs export declaration on the Italian side, the import declaration on the Swiss side, and the full set of paperwork. Being close is misleading: many first-time exporters treat a shipment to Lugano like a shipment to Milan, and find out the difference when the truck is stopped.

There are three practical consequences: someone has to be named as importer in Switzerland, the timeline gains an extra step, and the cost items multiply. None of this is serious, but all three catch out anyone who hasn't budgeted for them.

The health certificate is usually not needed

Here Switzerland is simpler than you might expect. The Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office writes, for imports from the European Union: “Grundsätzlich können Lebensmittel ohne Zeugnis in die Schweiz importiert werden”, meaning that in principle food can be imported into Switzerland without a certificate.

There are exceptions, and they need checking for your product: food of animal origin from non-EU countries is subject to special rules, and wild mushrooms from Eastern Europe require a certificate. For a processed plant-based product of EU origin, the general rule stands.

The flip side of this simplicity is in another line from the same source: importers must make sure, as part of their own self-checks, that goods meet the legal requirements. The check doesn't disappear; it moves to your buyer, who will therefore ask you for documents and spec sheets.

Duty is charged on gross weight

This is where the sums change compared with any other market. The Federal Office for Customs and Border Security calculates duties on gross weight, with rates in francs per 100 kg. Gross weight, as it defines it, is the actual weight (net mass) of the goods plus the weight of the packaging, filling and supports on which the goods are presented.

The actual transport materials are left out: containers, reusable pallets, securing structures. But the jar, the lid, the label and the carton all count. For food in glass this is a cost that really weighs, and it has to be worked out before you quote, not after.

A product in glass and one in a pouch, with the same contents, pay different duty at the Swiss border. Packaging is a commercial decision that becomes a customs cost.

Item	How it works in Switzerland	What changes compared with an EU market
Customsdeclaration	You need the export declaration on the Italian side and the import declaration on the Swiss side, with the full set of paperwork.	Within the EU, neither step exists. It's the difference that surprises people most, because the distance is the same.
Dutybasis of calculation	In francs per 100 kg of gross weight, including packaging, filling and supports.	No duty between Member States. And where duty does exist, it's usually calculated on value: here it's on weight, so the packaging counts.
VATon import	Reduced rate of 2.6% for food and additives, against the standard 8.1%. Alcoholic drinks excluded.	For intra-EU sales, VAT isn't paid at the border. Here the importer pays it, and who the importer is depends on the Incoterm.
Labellanguage	At least one official language of the Confederation. Italian is one of them.	In another Member State you need that market's language. Here Italian text works, as long as the content follows Swiss rules.
Certificatehealth	In principle not required for food from the European Union, with exceptions for animal-origin products and wild mushrooms.	As within the EU, but the responsibility shifts to the importer's self-checks, so they'll ask you for documents.

Import VAT

On top of the duty comes Swiss import VAT. Since 1 January 2024 the standard rate has been 8.1%, the reduced rate 2.6%, and the special rate for accommodation 3.8%. Food and additives fall under the reduced 2.6% rate, except for alcoholic drinks.

The 2.6% is good news for anyone selling food, because the cost of entry stays modest compared with other markets. Who pays it, and how it's recovered, depends on who is named as importer, and so on the Incoterm you put in your offer.

The label can stay in Italian

Article 36 of the Swiss Ordinance on Foodstuffs and Utility Articles requires the particulars to be given in at least one official language of the Confederation, and allows another language only exceptionally, where consumers in Switzerland are still informed about the food sufficiently and unambiguously.

Italian is an official language of the Confederation, so an Italian label meets the language requirement. That's a real advantage over markets where you need a translation, and it's worth telling the buyer, because it lowers the cost of taking on your product.

But language isn't the only requirement. The content of the label has to follow Swiss rules, which don't match the EU's on nutrition values, product names and some other particulars. Check before printing the batch, as for any other market.

Proof of origin, which is worth having here

Switzerland is one of the countries linked to the European Union by preferential customs agreements. That means that with the right proof of origin your buyer pays reduced duty or none, and that proof is a genuine selling point: it lowers their landed price without touching yours.

Below €6,000 the declaration goes on the invoice; above it you need an EUR.1 endorsed by customs or a registered status. The difference between the two documents, and how to choose, is in EUR.1 or certificate of origin.

When three countries' rules won't fit in one person's head

With Switzerland alone, you can learn the list in a week and it sticks. With Switzerland, the UK and a third market, each with its own thresholds, deadlines and documents, the list no longer fits in anyone's head, and the first thing to slip is always a date.

That's when deadlines need to come out of people's memory and into a place that watches them by itself, with operational deadline alerts. With one rule that matters more than the technology, set out in Ethics: the system prepares and flags, but no document goes out until a person has read and approved it.

Questions and answers