Buying and Shipping Mānuka Honey to Taiwan: Shipping Eligibility, Certification Definitions and Import Taxes

How HowBridge Can Help

HowBridge offers only one consolidated shipping route: China (our Shenzhen warehouse) → Taiwan. We have no warehouses in New Zealand or Australia. Honey also carries MW0 under Taiwan's controls on mainland Chinese goods, making this route unsuitable for shipping honey.

This section is deliberately more cautious than our other pages: honey is one of the few items we do not recommend for our consolidated shipping route. The issue is mainland Chinese goods controls and proof of origin, rather than shipping difficulty. We prefer to explain this upfront so you can avoid problems after your goods arrive.

Shipping Eligibility: Quarantine and Food Inspection

Honey is not subject to quarantine, so the ban on importing quarantine-controlled articles by post under Article 34, Paragraph 3 of the Statute for Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Diseases does not apply. Animal quarantine rules therefore do not prohibit shipping New Zealand or Australian honey to Taiwan by post or courier.

• Evidence one: B01 is absent from the import requirements. Natural honey under 0409.00.00.00-7 carries import requirements F01 and MW0, without B01 (animal quarantine). This finding is corroborated by two independent sources: the official open-data CSV from the Ministry of Finance's Customs Administration and the official Chapter 4 PDF of the Classification of Import and Export Commodities of the Republic of China from the Ministry of Economic Affairs' International Trade Administration.
• Evidence two: the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency explicitly defines B01 this way. The Ministry of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency states: “If the import approval requirements do not include B01, the goods are not subject to quarantine and no quarantine application to this agency is required.”
• Evidence three: honey is absent from the list of articles subject to animal quarantine. In Chapter 4 of the import schedule under the current Articles Subject to Animal Quarantine (Announcement No. 1121482860 (2023), dated August 30), the sequence jumps directly to 0410 90 10 (birds' nests) from 0408 99 90 (other similar products, egg products). No 0409 heading appears anywhere in the schedule.
• The only bee-related item on the list is live bees: 0106 41 00 00 4, “Bees, live,” with a note limiting the scope to “only animals of the honey bee, bumblebee and stingless bee genera.” Only live bees are subject to quarantine; honey is not.
• Nearby entries show that this is not an omission: neighboring items in the same chapter all carry B01—fresh milk 0401.10.10.00-1＝B01 F01 MW0, frozen liquid eggs 0408.99.90.00-1＝B01 F01 MW0, birds' nests 0410.90.10.10-1＝B01 F01 and insects 0410.10.00.00-2＝B01 F02 MP1. Honey alone does not.
• The postal import ban (Article 34, Paragraph 3 of the Statute for Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Diseases) states: “Articles subject to quarantine may not be imported by post. Articles imported by post shall be returned, confiscated or destroyed. Recipients who receive articles subject to quarantine imported by post shall immediately deliver them to the animal import and export quarantine authority for destruction.” Since honey is not subject to quarantine, this paragraph does not apply.
• Food inspection (F01): this means that an application for import inspection must be submitted to the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Food and Drug Administration in accordance with the Regulations of Inspection of Imported Foods and Related Products.
• Personal-use exemption from applying for inspection: under the Food and Drug Administration's Announcement No. 1081300310 (2019), dated April 16, 2019 and effective May 1, 2019, general foods and related products for personal use, excluding foods in tablet or capsule form, are exempt from applying for import inspection if their value is no more than 1,000 US dollars and their weight is no more than 6 kilograms, calculated using the value and quantity of a single customs declaration line item. A “single line item” covers goods with the same product name, ingredients, brand, manufacturer and origin, including the combined quantity across all batch numbers, manufacturing dates and package sizes under that product name.
• Imports exceeding the limits or intended for sale: food import inspection must be requested under Article 30, Paragraph 1 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation. Violations carry fines of at least 3 and no more than 300 tens of thousands of New Taiwan dollars under Article 47.
• 🔴 Check honeycomb honey separately. Products containing honeycomb may have a different tariff classification (beeswax 1521.90.10 carries 830 MW0). Products containing bee pupae or live bees may also fall under B01 for live bees. This page does not treat honeycomb honey as ordinary honey.

Sources: the Customs Import Tariff Data CSV published as open data by the Ministry of Finance's Customs Administration; the Chapter 4 PDF of the Classification of Import and Export Commodities of the Republic of China from the Ministry of Economic Affairs' International Trade Administration; the Ministry of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency, Instructions for Importing Microorganisms and Microbial Products Subject to Quarantine (2023-08-01); the annex to Articles Subject to Animal Quarantine in the Ministry of Agriculture's regulations database; Article 34 of the Statute for Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Diseases in the Laws and Regulations Database; Food and Drug Administration Announcement No. 1081300310 (2019); and the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Overseas Food Brought In or Purchased by Mail Requires Inspection and Cannot Be Sold Without Inspection. Accessed 2026-09-07.

Official UMF／MGO／KFactor／MPI Definitions

UMF officially tests four marker compounds (Leptosperin, DHA, MGO and HMF) and publishes corresponding values for five grades. MGO measures only one component. KFactor is a brand-defined methodology being replaced by MGO. MPI's scientific definition is mandatory only for exports.

Source: the official UMF Certification Comparison page of the UMF Honey Association, accessed on 2026-09-07. Meaning of the four markers: Leptosperin = an authenticity indicator (occurs naturally only in mānuka nectar); DHA = the precursor to MGO, with UMF certification requiring more than 70 mg/kg; MGO = the source of antibacterial activity; HMF = a freshness indicator associated with overheating or prolonged storage. ⚠️ Three points to note: ①The commonly circulated tables mapping individual UMF levels such as 6, 7, 8… are not official. UMFHA publishes only five grades: 5+／10+／15+／20+／25+, and the official value for 25+ is 1197, not the commonly cited 1200; ②UMF should not be understood as “impartial third-party verification”—UMFHA describes itself as independent, but it is an industry association made up of licensed brands. Its website does not name the laboratories it commissions. The accurate wording is “licensed and tested by the UMF Honey Association”; ③The MPI values on this page come from official MPI documents. The MPI website uses anti-scraping measures, so if you want to cite the latest version, please open the official MPI website directly to verify it.

Tariff Classifications, Duty Rates and Tax Exemptions

Natural honey under 0409.00.00.00-7 has a Column One duty rate of 35% and a Column Three rate of 45%; New Zealand is on the Column Two 0% list. Personal-use imports are exempt from customs duty and business tax when the combined customs value of the shipment is no more than 2,000 New Taiwan dollars.

• 0409.00.00.00-7 Natural honey: Column One duty rate 35%; Column Two 0% (PA, GT, NI, SV, HN, NZ, SG, BZ) or 7% (SZ); Column Three 45%. Statistical weight unit: KGM. Import requirements: F01 and MW0.
• New Zealand is on the Column Two 0% list; Australia is not. The Customs Administration explains that Column 2 applies to “specific imported goods from countries or territories that have signed free trade agreements or economic cooperation agreements with Taiwan,” explicitly including New Zealand (NZ). Accordingly, formal imports of Australian honey are subject to the Column One rate of 35%. This conclusion is inferred from AU's absence from the Column Two list, rather than an explicit statement located in the sources.
• ⚠️ Claiming the Column Two 0% rate requires proof of origin. The Customs Administration's page explains that Column 2 applies to “specific imported goods” from FTA partners, but this page did not locate the original procedural requirements specifying which proof of origin must accompany a 0% claim. Do not simply state that “New Zealand honey is duty-free”.
• Other bee products: royal jelly 0410.90.91.10-3 35%／0%／45% (F01 MW0); other bee products 0410.90.91.90-6 35% (514 MW0); artificial honey 1702.90.30.00-4 25% (F01 MW0); live bees 0106.41.00.00-4 12.5% (B01).
• ⚠️ “Other bee products” carry the code 514. The official definition of this code was unavailable when this page was fact-checked (the only record found was in the Executive Yuan Gazette, Volume 029, Issue 116, dated 2023-06-21, which changed the entry from blank to “514 MW0”). This page therefore does not cover propolis or bee pollen. For these two categories, please separately confirm the tariff classifications and import requirements with the Customs Administration, Ministry of Finance.
• Tax exemption threshold: Article 49, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 15 of the Customs Act exempts “small quantities of imported postal articles below the prescribed limit.” Paragraph 2 of the same article provides that goods are exempt when their combined customs value in the same shipment is below the limit announced by the Ministry of Finance, except for frequent imports or specific goods designated by the ministry. The Ministry of Finance exempts shipments with a combined customs value of no more than 2,000 New Taiwan dollars from customs duty and the business tax and commodity tax collected by Customs. However, tobacco, alcohol, agricultural products subject to tariff quotas and imports classified as frequent are excluded.
• Frequent imports: the exemption does not apply once the same taxpayer has had goods released under it more than 6 times within a half-year period. The periods run from month 1 through month 6 and month 7 through month 12 each year, based on the import date stated on the customs declaration. The count resets on day 1 of month 1 and day 1 of month 7 each year.
• 🔴 Mainland Chinese honey cannot be imported: natural honey appears on the Consolidated List of Mainland Chinese Goods Prohibited from Importation. MW0 means mainland Chinese goods are prohibited from importation. The same list also assigns MW0 to royal jelly and other bee products.

Sources: the Customs Import Tariff Data CSV published as open data by the Ministry of Finance's Customs Administration; the Customs Administration's What Are the Customs Import Tariff Rates? (published 2026-07-15); the Ministry of Economic Affairs' International Trade Administration's Consolidated List of Mainland Chinese Goods Prohibited from Importation (updated 115/09/07, covering 2,513 items); Article 49 of the Customs Act in the Laws and Regulations Database; and the Ministry of Finance's Overseas Online Shopping Is Easy, but Watch Out for Frequent Imports. Accessed 2026-09-07.

Authenticity Checks and Taiwan's Labeling Rules

Taiwan's current direct legal basis for honey labeling is the Labeling Requirements for Packaged Honey and Its Syrup Products. Academic methods for detecting adulteration include NMR and isotope ratio mass spectrometry, each with its own detection limitations.

• Taiwan's labeling requirements (Announcement No. 1111300822 (2022), announced May 11, 2022 and effective July 1, 2023): honey content must be 100% for a product to be labeled “pure honey” or “100% honey.” Products with a sugar content of 60% or more must be labeled “honey with added sugar”; those below 60% must be labeled “honey taste” or “honey flavor.”
• MGO values change with time and temperature, and this is supported by experimental evidence. Two papers published by Grainger and colleagues in Food Chemistry in 2016 measured the kinetics of DHA conversion to MGO at 4–37°C, confirming that storage temperature and time directly affect MGO concentration (DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2016.02.029 and .030). UMFHA also cites this in its official criticism of relying on MGO alone: “MGO levels fluctuate over time.”
• The foundational study identifying DHA as an MGO precursor: Atrott, Haberlau and Henle (2012), Carbohydrate Research 361:7-11, first demonstrated that DHA is a precursor to MGO through a Maillard-type reaction, establishing the chemical basis for MGO grading (DOI: 10.1016/j.carres.2012.07.025).
• Australia also produces honey from the same plant genus. In a large-sample study published in PLOS ONE, Cokcetin and colleagues (2016) demonstrated a strong correlation between MGO and non-peroxide antibacterial activity (NPA) in Australian Leptospermum honey: MGO greater than 260 mg/kg corresponded to NPA greater than 10%, while values greater than 800 corresponded to greater than 20% (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167780).
• Adulteration testing methods: Bertelli and colleagues (2010), J. Agric. Food Chem. 58:8495-8501, used one- and two-dimensional high-resolution NMR to detect syrup adulteration (DOI: 10.1021/jf101460t). Rachineni and colleagues (2022), Current Research in Food Science 5:272-277, combined NMR with supervised machine learning to further classify the type of syrup added (DOI: 10.1016/j.crfs.2022.01.008). Gulenc and colleagues (2026), LWT 242:119139, used ethanol isotope ratio mass spectrometry to detect C3 syrup adulteration that conventional EA-IRMS cannot detect (DOI: 10.1016/j.lwt.2026.119139).
• Taiwan's official testing method and its limitations: You Xinzheng and colleagues (2018), Testing for C4 Sugars in Honey Using an Elemental Analyzer Coupled with an Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer, Annual Report of Food and Drug Research, Issue 9, 104-114 (the Food and Drug Administration's official annual report), established an EA-IRMS testing method while acknowledging that it can detect only C4 sugars, not C3 high-fructose syrup.
• Chemical markers for mānuka authenticity: Bong and colleagues (2017), Food Chemistry 214:102-109, identified leptosperin as a fluorescent marker specific to the mānuka nectar source that can be used for rapid screening (DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2016.07.018). Lin and colleagues (2020), ACS Omega 5(15):8858-8866, found that lepteridine has better long-term storage stability than 2′-MAP (DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.0c00486). Kato and colleagues (2014), J. Agric. Food Chem. 62:6400-6407, established an authentication method using the dual markers leptosperin and methyl syringate (DOI: 10.1021/jf501475h).
• ⚠️ No standalone Food and Drug Administration inspection press release or sampling-results announcement specifically addressing honey adulteration was located for this page. The original Taipei City Department of Health press release about its frequently cited 2015 sampling case is no longer available; only media reports remain. Any citation must therefore be qualified as “according to media reports.” The official Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection text containing the numerical criteria in the CNS 1305 national honey standard was also not obtained, so those figures are omitted.

MPI's official scientific definition, mandatory only for exports: Monofloral honey must have 2′-Methoxyacetophenone ≥ 5 mg/kg, 2-Methoxybenzoic acid ≥ 1 mg/kg, 4-Hydroxyphenyllactic acid ≥ 1 mg/kg and 3-Phenyllactic acid ≥ 400 mg/kg, with mānuka pollen DNA below Cq 36. Multifloral honey requires 2′-MAP ≥ 1, 2-MBA ≥ 1, 4-HPLA ≥ 1 and 3-PLA ≥ 20 but below 400 mg/kg, with DNA below Cq 36. The legal basis is a Notice issued under section 167(1) of the Animal Products Act 1999, effective from day 5 of month 2 in 2018. This definition does not govern domestic sales in New Zealand.

Official Shipping Policies by Brand

Of four frequently mentioned brands, Wedderspoon and Capilano explicitly do not ship directly to Taiwan, Chemist Warehouse offers no international shipping, and no Taiwan shipping information was found on Comvita's official websites.

Sources: the brands' official website pages, accessed 2026-09-07. Brand policies may change at any time. Check the current terms on the official website before ordering.

Frequently Asked Questions