Exporting olive oil to Japan. The duty is zero; the label isn't.

Japan charges nobody duty on olive oil. The game is played on the Japanese label, which belongs to the importer.

This page is part of exporting olive oil, which covers the EU marketing standards and the main markets, and goes into detail on the Japanese market. Who pays for freight and customs clearance depends on the term written in the offer, as explained in Incoterms: who pays for what.

How to export olive oil to Japan: what really counts

Exporting olive oil to Japan comes down to two things, because there's no duty: the Japanese label with the mandatory items, which the importer is responsible for, and the food notification the importer files for every import. The Italian olive mill's job is to give the importer the right data for both.

Item	What Japan requires	Source
Duty	Zero on headings 1509 and 1510, for everyone.	Customs tariff as of 1 April 2026
Food notification	For every import, to the Ministry of Health.	Food Sanitation Act, Art. 27
Label	In Japanese, with the mandatory items and five nutrition values.	Tokyo Metropolitan Government

Duty on olive oil in Japan: zero, even without the agreement

Olive oil enters Japan duty-free, whatever the country of origin. In the Japanese customs tariff in force from 1 April 2026, the general rate for headings 1509.20, 1509.30, 1509.40, 1509.90 and 1510 is “Free”. The European Union column also shows “Free”, and adds nothing.

This is the main difference from wine in Japan, where zero duty only applies with the EU-Japan agreement proof of origin, and without it you pay the WTO rate. On olive oil, proof of origin doesn't change the duty: if the importer asks for it, it's for other reasons, and it's worth asking which.

The Japanese label for olive oil: the mandatory items

To sell an imported processed food in Japan you need a Japanese label on the container or packaging, and the importer is responsible for it. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, in its guide for people preparing a Japanese label for the first time, lists the mandatory items and specifies that they apply to food produced abroad as well.

Item	What to write	Notes
Name	The product's name.	In Japanese, like every item.
Ingredients and additives	Additives listed separately from ingredients.	For a single-ingredient oil, the list is short.
Best-before date and storage	Date in year, month, day order; storage conditions.	The date is written in the Japanese order.
Nutrition values	Energy, protein, fat, carbohydrate, sodium expressed as salt equivalent.	Small businesses meeting the legal criteria are exempt.
Origin and importer	Country of origin; importer's name and address.	The importer is responsible for the label.

There are five nutrition values: energy, protein, fat, carbohydrate and sodium, the last expressed as salt equivalent. The same guide says small businesses meeting the criteria of the consumption tax law or the basic law on small and medium-sized enterprises can leave them out.

The Japanese label comes on top of the EU marketing standards for olive oil, described in the main guide to olive oil. The differences between markets are in export labelling, market by market.

The food notification for every import

Anyone importing food into Japan for sale notifies the Minister of Health on every occasion, as Article 27 of the Food Sanitation Act requires. The importer files the notification, but the product data, from composition to process, comes from the olive mill.

“Those who wish to import food, food additives, apparatus, containers and packaging for sale or for use in business, shall notify the Minister of Health, Labour, and Welfare on each occasion” (Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Food Sanitation Act, Art. 27)

The template, to download

One file, one sheet: the olive oil checklist for Japan, with the source next to each line and a drop-down status to fill in. The Japanese label items are one per line, so you can check the importer's draft item by item before printing.

File	Contents	Link
Olive oil to JapanExcel, one sheet	Twelve lines: duty, food notification, the Japanese label items.	olio-giappone-checklist-etichetta-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 sheet doesn't translate the label: the importer prepares and signs off the Japanese draft.

Questions and answers