Italy Just Proved Brexit Can't Stop This $4.9 Billion Habit

Jan de Vries · 2026-10-02

### The Numbers That Raised Eyebrows Italian food, drink, and tobacco exports to Britain hit €4.56 billion in 2025. That's about $4.9 billion at current exchange rates, and it makes Italy's grocery-and-tobacco trade with the UK its single largest export category. Brexit was supposed to throw sand in the gears of European trade with Britain. For Italian producers, it clearly didn't. You'd expect a dip after the UK left the EU. New customs paperwork, border checks, delays at ports. All of that happened. Yet the appetite for Italian goods across the Channel kept growing anyway. ### Why Britain Keeps Coming Back for More Think about what Britain actually imports from Italy. Pasta. Olive oil. Wine. Coffee. Cured meats. Cheeses like Parmigiano and pecorino. Tobacco products round out the category. These aren't impulse buys. They're pantry staples for millions of British households. When you've cooked with proper Italian olive oil for years, switching to a cheaper substitute feels like a downgrade you can taste. Here's the thing: food habits are sticky. They survive political upheaval, currency swings, and even supply chain chaos. People don't renegotiate their dinner plates because of a trade agreement. ### The Brexit Effect Nobody Predicted What's interesting is how the trade adapted. Instead of collapsing, the supply chain reorganized itself. - Larger Italian exporters absorbed the customs costs and kept shipping direct - Smaller producers leaned on UK-based distributors to handle the paperwork - British importers built new warehousing capacity to smooth out border delays - Premium Italian brands actually gained ground, since they could pass costs to loyal buyers In other words, the friction slowed things down but didn't stop them. And in some cases, it pushed the market toward higher-value products. ### What This Means for European Startups There's a broader lesson here that's worth sitting with. If you're building a consumer brand in Europe and eyeing the UK market, the old assumption that Brexit killed cross-border trade is just wrong. The regulatory landscape is messier, sure. You'll need a UK entity or a local partner. You'll deal with VAT registration and customs classification. It's not fun. But the demand is still there, and it's strong. For food, beverage, and lifestyle startups especially, the UK remains one of the most accessible non-EU markets for European brands. Language, culture, and consumer taste all line up. The paperwork is a cost of doing business, not a dealbreaker. ### The Bigger Picture Italy's €4.56 billion grocery export figure isn't just a food story. It's a signal that European trade with Britain is finding its footing again. The initial shock of 2021 and 2022 has faded. Companies have learned the new rules. Distributors have built workarounds. Consumers have shown they'll pay a little more for what they love. That doesn't mean everything is rosy. Smaller producers still struggle with compliance costs. Margins are tighter than they were pre-Brexit. And the political relationship between the UK and EU remains complicated. But if you're a European founder wondering whether the UK is still worth targeting, the answer from Italian exporters is pretty clear. They didn't just survive Brexit. They grew through it. And that's a playbook worth studying.