Sourced from HMRC. Not scraped. Not guessed.
Every record on FreightSource traces back to an official HMRC trade filing. No LinkedIn scraping, no ad-tech inference, no recycled lead lists. When you call a trader, you're calling someone who's actually moved cargo this month.
Official HMRC trade filings. Nothing else.
Every UK importer and exporter declares each customs entry to HMRC. Those filings are published as monthly trade statistics. FreightSource ingests every release, deduplicates, and normalises company entities — so you query the official record, not a scrape.
What HMRC publishes
HMRC's UK Trade Info releases monthly trade statistics covering every customs entry made by every UK business. Each record carries the declarant, commodity code, value, direction (import or export), trading partner country and entry date.
FreightSource ingests the full release, joins to Companies House for legal entity data, and surfaces the lot through filters built for sales reps — not analysts.
What we don't do
No LinkedIn scraping. Profiles aren't trade evidence. They're stale within months.
No ad-tech inference. Cookies and intent scores can't tell you who actually shipped a container.
No recycled lead lists. If you've bought one, you've called the same names as every competitor in the country.
No black-box scoring. Every "hot" or "warm" signal links back to the underlying entries. Click any score, read the data.
What's in the corpus.
Every UK importer and exporter that has filed with HMRC since FreightSource began ingesting — plus every commodity code, every region, every direction.
Full UK + Crown Dependencies
- England (regions × 9)9
- Scotland✓
- Wales✓
- Northern Ireland✓
- Isle of Man, Channel Islands✓
- Postcode area + districtPR1 → 124
Chapter to 8-digit subheading
- HS chapters (2-digit)97
- Headings (4-digit)1,200+
- Subheadings (6-digit)5,000+
- UK 8-digit codes5,200+
- Plain-English descriptions✓
- Multi-code drill-down✓
Import, export, both
- Imports~73%
- Exports~27%
- Bidirectional traders12,400
- Records ingested1M+
- UK businesses tracked100K+
- Active this month~38K
What every record carries.
Each HMRC customs entry surfaces a consistent set of fields. Available in the UI, available in CSV export, available via API on Premium.
| Field | Type | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| company_name | string | Legal entity name as declared, normalised against Companies House. | Ridgeway Apparel Group Ltd |
| company_number | string | Companies House registered number — primary key for joining. | 09812345 |
| postcode | string | Full UK postcode of the declared address. | M1 4BS |
| region | enum | Standard ONS UK region (NW, SE, etc.) plus nations. | North West |
| hs_code | string(8) | UK 8-digit commodity code. Stored chapter, heading, subheading separately. | 6109.10.00 |
| direction | enum | Import or export. | import |
| value_gbp | int | Declared customs value in GBP, integer pence. | 124,500 |
| entry_date | date | Month of the HMRC release the entry belongs to. | 2026-04-01 |
| partner_country | iso2 | Trading partner country code. | CN |
From HMRC release to live trader board.
Every monthly HMRC release flows through the same pipeline — ingest, normalise, dedupe, index — before it lands in your board. Repeatable, traceable, observable.
HMRC publishes
Monthly trade statistics drop on the HMRC UK Trade Info site, covering the most recent reporting month.
~7th of each monthIngest & normalise
Full release ingested, joined against Companies House for legal entity, postcode and region. Commodity codes split into chapter / heading / subheading.
+24hDedupe & signal
Multiple filings under variant names collapsed to one entity. 90-day volume signals (Hot / Warm / Steady) recomputed against the new release.
+24hLive in your board
New traders, new signals, new entries on every saved search. Email alerts fire for anyone whose criteria matched a fresh trader this month.
~10th of each monthCommon questions about the data.
Most asked at demos. If yours isn't here, drop us a line.
Is FreightSource an official HMRC product?
No. HMRC publishes the raw trade statistics; FreightSource licenses and re-indexes them. We're not affiliated with HMRC — we're built on the same public data they release each month.
How current is the data?
HMRC releases trade statistics monthly, typically around the first week of each month covering the previous reporting period. FreightSource ingests every release within 48 hours of publication.
Why don't you show declared trader names from HMRC's data?
We do — and we go further. HMRC declarant strings can vary across filings ("Ridgeway Apparel", "Ridgeway Apparel Group Ltd", "RIDGEWAY APPAREL GROUP LIMITED"). We normalise every variant against Companies House so you see one canonical entity, not three duplicates.
What about exporters? Or is this just imports?
Both. About 73% of records are imports and 27% exports — that mirrors UK trade flows. The trader board supports filtering on direction so you can prospect importers, exporters, or both.
Do you cover EU trade after Brexit?
Yes. Post-Brexit, EU trade is declared to HMRC the same way as non-EU trade. We don't draw any distinction in the data.
Can I export the underlying records?
Yes — CSV export is in every plan. Premium adds API access for programmatic ingestion. Every export carries the full schema fields listed above.
Is the data GDPR-compliant?
Yes. All records are corporate trade filings — there's no personal data in the corpus. FreightSource itself hosts in the UK and is GDPR-compliant for the user account data we hold about you.
Stop guessing. Start with the official record.
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