The map above shows the top item the UK imports from every country on earth. Overall, the UK imports around £54.5 billion worth of goods, services, food and commodities from the rest of the world.
The data for the map came from The Observatory of Economic Complexity and includes a lot of interesting surprises such as:
- The most popular category of imports to the UK is food and produce. This includes fish fillets from Iceland, sheep and goat meat from New Zealand and wine from Chile.
- 13 countries top export item to the UK is gold. This includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan and Turkey.
- Brits love their tea and it’s the top import item from Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania.
- 21 different countries send the UK some sort of fuel products including crude petroleum, petroleum gas and refined petroleum. This includes the usual suspects such as Venezuela, Norway, Russia and Saudi Arabia and a few surprises like Finland, Sweden and Belarus.
- Uncommon import items include: insect resins from Sudan and Chad, fake hair from Togo, insulated wire from many countries including Morocco, audio alarms from The British Virgin Islands, cheese from Cyprus, wool from Syria and knit sweaters from Madagascar.
Top UK Imports From European Countries
Top UK Imports From African & Middle Eastern Countries
Top UK Imports From Countries In The Americas
Top UK Imports From Asian Countries
Find anything interesting or surprising? Then please leave your comments below and help us by sharing the map:
Montana says
Great informative post.
Joe says
Dacia cars are from Romania.
Kathy says
Shared information about UK imports from Asian countries really is wonderful and helpful information for me actually by the help of it I got my business goals. Thanks for sharing it!
Boris Johnson says
great website, fascinating to learn, grateful to find this fantastic website. have a great day all
Guy Lambert says
Intriguing to see that the UK apparently imports Audio Alarms from the British Virgin Islands. Viryually all of the economy of BVI is financial services or tourism.
“Agriculture and industry account for only a small proportion of the islands’ GDP.[3] Agricultural produce includes fruit, vegetables, sugar cane, livestock and poultry, and industries include rum distillation, construction and boat building. Commercial fishing is also practised in the islands’ waters.[5]”
The dominant audio alarm system in UK is Ring. Ring is owned by Amazon and has numerous privacy concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(company)
I’m extremely doubtful we import a lot of alarm systems from the BVI, but I know we export a lot of tax receipts to that “country”