How do I find importers in Germany? Free sources and checks

German customs (Zoll) and Destatis, the Federal Statistical Office, do not publish the names of importing companies.

Destatis is still useful for sizing a market. Its foreign trade page has tables, a ranking of Germany's trading partners, and the GENESIS-Online database with more foreign trade data. Use it to check how much Germany imports and from which countries.

Some German buyers are visible from the exporting side. When an exporter in India, Vietnam or Pakistan declares a shipment, the export record names the buyer. These are mirror records: a German company appears because an exporter in another country declared a shipment to it. The table counts German companies named as buyers in those records.

Read the last column first. For black pepper, about 91% of the declared value in these records comes from Vietnam. A Vietnamese pepper exporter is therefore looking at German companies that already buy from its competitors at home. For dried chillies, about 43% of the value comes from Mexico's records, so a large part of this recorded German trade is Mexican chilli. If you sell Indian or Vietnamese chilli, ask each buyer which origins it buys now, and keep the ones that buy Asian origins.

The data provider does not say what period these records cover. So a company on record bought this product at some time, not necessarily this year. The numbers are read monthly, and each product page shows 'last changed', the date they last moved. Before you contact a name, check that its website or catalogue still lists your product. The pages show totals and origins, not names. The names behind the counts are shown in Reevi search results (see the last section).

Only food and farm product pages (HS chapters 01 to 24) appear in search results for Germany. For non-food goods, much of the trade comes from countries missing in the data, China among them. A German count would then look like the whole market when it is not. That is why this guide shows no German counts for non-food products. If you sell essential oils or wooden furniture, the pages for essential oils and wooden furniture list every tracked market.

German wholesale and import trade is organised in federal associations by product group, and several publish member lists. Start at the Industries and Company Lists page of the German Business Portal. It links the associations and their member pages. Open the one for your product:

• Turmeric, pepper, cumin, chillies, tea, essential oils: German Trade Association (WGA). WGA is the umbrella for wholesale and foreign trade in tea, gums, herbs, spices, cocoa, food supplements, additives, essential oils and herbal raw materials. The portal links its member associations page and a separate herbs and spices page (WGA-HH). Open each member association and look for its member list.
• Dried fruit, nuts, canned and frozen food, organic, honey, seafood: Waren-Verein der Hamburger Börse (waren-verein.de). It is the federal association for wholesale and foreign trade in durable food products, with 129 member companies. It has specialist groups for dried fruit and nuts and for canned and frozen products, a working group for organic products, and affiliated associations for seafood and honey. The portal links its members page.
• Coffee: the coffee association's member list (kaffeeverband.de).
• Rice, grain and fruit: member lists at vdg-ev.de (grain) and dfhv.de (fruit). Rice exporters can check the grain list and Waren-Verein.
• Food makers that buy ingredients: Federation of German Food and Drink Industries (BVE). It lists member companies and branch associations.
• Non-food goods: the same page links BGA federal trade association lists by product group: automotive parts (gva.de), building materials (bdb-bfh.de), chemicals (vch-online.de), electronics (veg.de), technical trade (vth-verband.de) and timber (gdholz.de). It also links the ceramics association's member list for ceramic tableware. With the fair exhibitor lists below, this is the free route to non-food names.

Most member pages are in German. Look for the link marked Mitglieder (members). Waren-Verein also publishes its own contract clauses for worldwide trade in durable food (the Waren-Vereins-Bedingungen). If a German buyer proposes them, read them before you agree terms.

AUMA, the association of the German trade fair industry, runs a database of more than 3,500 trade fairs. You can search it by title, year, sector, country or city. You do not need to exhibit, or even travel, to use a fair's exhibitor list as a list of German traders in your sector.

1. 1

   Search by sector and year

   Enter your sector (for example food, organic, spices or housewares) and the coming year. Keep fairs held in Germany. Note each fair's dates and website.

2. 2

   Open the exhibitor list

   On the fair's own website, find the exhibitor list (in German: Ausstellerverzeichnis). Keep the companies that describe themselves as importers or wholesalers (in German: Importeur, Großhandel).

The Import Promotion Desk (IPD) offers free services to European importers and brokers contacts to producers in selected partner countries. IPD visits each producer on site. It checks product quality, export capacity and certification (for example GLOBALG.A.P., ISO, IFS, HACCP and FSC). It then introduces these producers to importers at European trade fairs, at virtual B2B events and on buying missions. The German Business Portal lists its sectors as fruit, vegetables, natural ingredients, cut flowers, technical wood and sustainable tourism.

If your country is listed, ask your national export promotion body whether it works with IPD, and check IPD's event list. Upcoming events include a natural ingredients buying mission to Sri Lanka from 13 to 19 January 2027, focused on spices and dried fruits. They also include matchmaking at Biofach 2027 in Nuremberg from 16 to 19 February 2027.

1. 1

   Find the company in the Unternehmensregister

   The German company register platform has an English interface and a quick search by company name or EUID. It gives access to entries and filed documents from the trade, cooperative, corporation and partnership registers. Search the exact legal name, including the legal form such as GmbH. Compare the registered address with the address the buyer gave you.

2. 2

   Validate the buyer's EORI number

   Ask the buyer for its EORI number, the EU customs identification number. Enter it in the EU's EORI validation tool. A number that does not validate is a reason to ask more questions before you ship.

3. 3

   Check the rules for your product

   Search your product and origin country in 'My Trade Assistant' on the EU's Access2Markets portal. It shows the conditions to trade it in the EU, including rules of origin.

For a full checklist on payment risk and red flags, see how to verify a foreign buyer. For what to put in the first message, see the first email to an importer.

Reevi takes a product description and Germany as the market. It returns named German companies, each with a short reason it fits. You then confirm each name in the Unternehmensregister as above. This matters most for non-food goods, where no German counts are shown. The run below was for stainless steel kitchenware from India. Company names are removed.

• Three of the five results are German brands. Check whether each one sources finished goods from outside suppliers. The competitor flags mark the results that need this check.
• The search said 'LFGB tested'. LFGB is the German food and feed code, and German buyers of food-contact goods expect that test report.
• You do not need a company website to search. This run started without a company name or website.
• The Grow plan is $9.90 a month for contacts on 25 buyers; the pricing page lists all plans.