Food Business Licensing in Tanzania: TBS, TMDA or the Council

This page is the food business licensing operating file: how to place a product, a premises and a trade with the three desks that can each stop it, in the order they take the work. It is not a food-safety management manual and not a substitute for the standard your product must meet.

• Buying processed food for resale: crop file before payment
• Sending the same product out: cashew export operating guide
• The company underneath the licence: complete business setup
• The sibling licence for farm inputs: TFRA dealer classes

As at 14 September 2026. This file rests on Cap. 130 and the regulations made under it, on Cap. 219, and on the Public Health Act, 2009; confirm live forms and charges at tbs.go.tz and at the council holding your ward.

Food left the drugs authority in 2019 and has not come back

The Finance Act, 2019 moved regulation of food and cosmetics away from the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority and gave it to TBS. What remained was renamed the Tanzania Medicines and Medical Devices Authority.

Premises registration, product certification and the licence to apply the national standards mark now sit in the Standards (Registration of Premises and Certification of Products) Regulations, 2021, made by GN No. 683 of 2021. Charges sit in the fees instrument made under the Standards Act and move by Government Notice; no amount is reproduced here, and the zonal office gives its assessment in writing.

Both are Mainland instruments. Food premises in Unguja and Pemba answer to the Zanzibar Food and Drug Agency, with standards work at the Zanzibar Bureau of Standards, company records at BPRA rather than BRELA, and non-Union tax at ZRA rather than TRA.

Map the product before you book a desk

The first question is what the thing is in law, because one kitchen can produce items belonging to different regulators. A bottled juice is food. The same juice with “boosts immunity” on the shoulder label has made a therapeutic claim and moved toward medicines. Decide the claim, then print.

Screen the activity before you sign a lease

Non-citizen investors settle two questions before any regulator is approached. The reserved schedule published at GN No. 487A of 2025 keeps small-scale trading and petty food vending for citizens; manufacture, processing and wholesale generally sit outside it. The schedule is read as written, not as summarised in a broker’s message.

The second question is land. A non-citizen may not hold land for occupation under the Land Act except through a derivative right, which for an investment project runs through the Tanzania Investment Centre. A processing plant is tenure-heavy (floor drains, cold store, effluent, a weighbridge), and the route decides whether the building permit, and every approval stacked on it, can issue at all.

A hotel kitchen is not a food factory

Premises classification decides which regulator inspects. Where food is manufactured, processed, packed, blended or stored for supply beyond your own counter, TBS registers the building and an officer walks it: layout and product flow, separation of raw and finished goods, water source, cold chain, waste route, pest control, changing and washing facilities. Registration attaches to that address, so a second unit across town is a second file.

Where food is cooked and served to the person in front of you, the environmental health officer holds the file under the Public Health Act, 2009: premises inspection, a health clearance, medical examination certificates for everyone touching product, and the waste and water conditions in the by-laws.

A hotel bottling its own drinking water for guest rooms, a restaurant jarring chilli sauce for a supermarket shelf, a bakery starting to supply a fuel-station chain: each has begun manufacturing for supply, and picks up the standards file mid-contract and under time pressure.

What the council owns on the same premises

The trade licence sits in the Business Licensing Act Cap. 208, in two classes. Class A licences issue centrally through the ministry responsible for industry and trade for the categories the Act reserves to it; Class B licences issue from the council for everything else.

Around the licence sit the charges operators forget to budget: health clearance, food handlers’ certificates, refuse collection, signboard and advertisement fees set by by-law, and a service levy of 0.3% of turnover under the Local Government Finance Act Cap. 290. That levy is a tax on turnover payable where the premises sit, not a licence fee, and it does not pause because the year was unprofitable.

Imported food arrives with its own file

Imports run on their own instrument, the Standards (Imports Registration and Batch Certification) Regulations, 2021 (GN No. 681). TBS operates pre-shipment verification of conformity through appointed inspection agents in the country of supply, and the certificate of conformity issued there travels with the documents. A consignment landing without it is routed to destination inspection, with the delay and charges that follow; demurrage is usually the larger number.

A remaining shelf-life rule applies at entry, so stock bought cheaply because it is close to expiry can be refused outright: ask the zonal office for the live proportion before you place the order. The label must carry every particular the labelling standard names: product name, ingredients in descending order of weight, net content, the name and physical address of manufacturer and local importer, batch identification, manufacture and expiry dates in the prescribed form, storage instructions and country of origin.

The sequence the desks actually take

1. Screen activity and ownership: the reserved schedule, and for a non-citizen the tenure route, before any lease deposit moves.
2. Incorporate and open the tax file: BRELA registration, taxpayer identification, and a premises address written exactly as the council writes it, because every later form repeats it.
3. Settle the building: lease or title, building and occupation permits, the fire certificate under the Fire and Rescue Force Act Cap. 427, workplace registration with OSHA, and an environmental certificate through NEMC under the Environmental Management Act Cap. 191 where the plant is caught.
4. Register the premises: application under the 2021 regulations with the layout drawing, then the inspection and the defect list that follows it.
5. Certify the product: samples to a recognised laboratory against the applicable Tanzania Standard, the certification decision, and for local manufacture the licence to apply the mark to that item.
6. Take the council file: health clearance, food handlers’ certificates, then the trade licence.
7. Open the levy diary: tax returns where registered, the turnover levy, payroll heads, and every renewal date entered a clear month early.

Documents the file needs

Certificate of incorporation with a current BRELA extract; taxpayer identification certificate; title deed or registered lease carrying the plot number as the council spells it; a scaled layout drawing showing product flow from goods-in to dispatch; a potability report for the water used in production; a pest-control contract naming the contractor; medical examination certificates for every food handler on the payroll, casuals included; final label artwork for each item; the process description and the shelf-life justification behind the expiry date you intend to print; laboratory test reports against the applicable standard; and control-number receipts for everything paid.

Illustrative arithmetic: a Dar es Salaam juice line

Take a leased unit in Mikocheni bottling three products (mango, passion and tamarind) with projected first-year turnover of TZS 1,200,000,000. Service levy at 0.3% under Cap. 290 is TZS 3,600,000 for the year, payable to the city council whether or not the line runs at capacity.

Assume the contract laboratory quotes TZS 250,000 a sample for the panel the standard calls for, and that the file needs two samples per product, one at application and one on verification. Six samples come to TZS 1,500,000; value added tax at the standard rate of 18% under the Value Added Tax Act Cap. 148 adds TZS 270,000, giving TZS 1,770,000 on the laboratory invoice alone.

Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation: turnover, unit price and sample count are assumptions, and the real test panel belongs to the standard.

Where this file stalls

• An application lodged with the medicines authority for an ordinary food product, four weeks lost before it is returned unread
• A framed certificate from the old drugs authority treated as current registration by a landlord, a buyer or a bank
• Ten thousand labels printed before artwork was assessed, missing the batch code, the importer’s address or the expiry format
• Raw materials, finished goods and the staff toilet block sharing one doorway on the layout drawing
• Borehole water used in production with no potability report on file
• Health certificates for the supervisor and none for the twelve casuals on the line
• Trade licence in a director’s personal name while lease and registration sit with the company

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

TBS registers food premises, certifies products and licenses the standards mark. TMDA owns medicines, medical devices and diagnostics, and any product whose label crosses into treatment. The council owns the trade licence, the health clearance and the turnover levy. TRA owns taxpayer registration, value added tax, excise and the electronic tax stamp. The Weights and Measures Agency verifies scales and the declared net content on the pack; the Government Chemist Laboratory Authority owns the industrial chemicals used for cleaning and sanitising; TFRA and the plant-health desks own farm inputs, not the finished food.

Zatra prepares, structures and coordinates the pack, the sequence and the diary. It does not inspect premises, test samples, practise law, audit, or issue any licence or approval, and no regulatory outcome is promised.

What to confirm before you act

• Whether the label makes your product food, a cosmetic or a medicine, settled before a single application is lodged
• The live application forms and the written charge assessment at the TBS zonal office holding your region
• Whether the exact activity you will describe on the licence appears on the reserved schedule
• Which class of trade licence the council’s trade officer assigns to the activity
• The remaining shelf-life proportion applied at import, before a supplier is given the order