Last updated: July 2026. A working grower’s guide to New Spitalfields Market in Leyton: the trading hours and site facts as published by the City of London Corporation, what it costs to get a vehicle in and out, who buys there, how the salesman relationship and sale-or-return conventions apply, a worked consignment example built on Defra’s current wholesale price data, and a readiness checklist for a first consignment. Every figure in this guide is either linked to a primary source or clearly labelled as an assumption. General information, not regulated business advice.

New Spitalfields is the market most UK salad and vegetable growers mean when they talk about “sending it to London”. It has the highest number of wholesale horticultural traders of any market in the UK, and its tenants’ specialisation in exotic fruit and vegetables gives it the widest choice of those lines of any market in Europe, according to the City of London Corporation, which owns and runs the site.[1] If I were a grower in the eastern counties deciding where a first speculative pallet of salad should go, Leyton is where I would start the homework, and this guide is that homework done: what the market actually is, what it costs to use, and what the arithmetic of a consignment looks like at today’s published prices.

What New Spitalfields is

The market sits on a 31-acre site off Sherrin Road in Leyton, east London, where it has traded since May 1991, when the fruit and vegetable market moved out of the cramped Victorian buildings on Brushfield Street that it had outgrown.[2] The Spitalfields name goes back a long way: a royal charter from Charles II in 1682, a purpose-built market hall completed in 1893, and City of London control since 1920.[2]

The modern site, per the Corporation’s own description, consists of a 28,700 square metre Market Hall housing 115 trading units for wholesale businesses, four separate buildings with 3,720 square metres of self-contained units for catering supply companies, over 900 square metres of office space for importers, plus cafes, a fuel supply area, a recycling compound, a London mushroom-growing collective and dedicated space for one of the UK’s largest food rescue charities.[1] Across the whole site, more than 140 businesses operate: wholesalers, importers and catering suppliers selling to every part of the horticultural trade.[3] In 2025 the market was named Wholesale Market of the Year by the National Association of British Market Authorities, the third time it has taken the title in twelve years.[1]

Two features of the tenant list matter to a grower weighing up the market. The first is scale: 140-plus businesses under and around one roof means more competing buyers for a given category than any other UK horticultural market, which is what makes the price discovery real. The second is the exotic and speciality weighting. Leyton’s wholesalers built their reputation on Asian, African, Caribbean and Mediterranean produce lines, and the buyer base reflects it. A grower with speciality herbs, unusual brassicas or ethnic-market vegetables has a natural home here that a commodity-only market cannot offer.

Trading hours and the shape of the night

The market is open to wholesale trade from midnight to 11am, Monday to Saturday.[4] It is closed on Sundays and all bank holidays, with the exception of Good Friday.[5] For delivery vehicles, the lorry park has 24-hour access, and the Market Hall itself has 24-hour access for deliveries on condition that the receiving premises are staffed, except on Saturday evenings.[5]

In practice that midnight opening sets the rhythm for a supplying grower. Produce lifted or loaded in the afternoon travels in the late evening, lands at Leyton around or after midnight, and is on the stand as the earliest buyers walk the floor in the small hours. The Corporation itself warns visitors that the site is at its busiest and hardest to navigate around the midnight opening, easing as the morning wears on.[5] A consignment that arrives after the early trade has passed through is selling into a thinner market, which is the same discipline that applies at New Covent Garden and Birmingham: the delivery slot agreed with the salesman is a commitment, not an aspiration.

What it costs to get in and out

New Spitalfields is unusual among UK markets in publishing its vehicle tariff in full, and the numbers are worth knowing before the first run because the exit fee is a condition of leaving the site.[4] Pedestrian access is free. Cars and vans pay £3 per vehicle per day, or £593 for a 12-month season card. Heavy goods vehicles pay £3 for a stay of up to five hours, £10 for five to eight hours, and £100 beyond eight hours; an HGV season card at £625 a year covers up to five hours’ parking per day.[4] Payment is by mobile app, on-site pay machines or an online portal for season cards, and every vehicle gets a 15-minute recess period after arrival to leave without charge.[4]

The structure of that HGV tariff carries an operational message: the market wants delivery vehicles in, unloaded and out. A driver who drops a consignment and clears the site inside five hours costs £3; a lorry used as free overnight storage costs £100. Plan the run so the vehicle is not sitting on site through the morning.

Anyone attending in person should also know the site rules: a yellow hi-viz vest is mandatory at all times (they sell them at the gate for £3 if you arrive without one), children under 12 are not allowed on site, and the market sells in wholesale quantities only, box level rather than kilo level.[5]

Who you actually sell to

As at every UK wholesale market, a grower does not sell to “the market”. You sell to one wholesaler business among the 140-plus on site, run by a salesman whose job is to source produce that matches the day’s demand, clear the stand before the close, and account back to you on price and volume. The full mechanics of that relationship, the commission conversation and the difference between a firm price and sale or return are covered in our UK wholesale markets guide, and all of it applies at Leyton unchanged. The short version for a first-time consignor: unless you have explicitly agreed otherwise, assume the consignment is sale or return, meaning you receive what the salesman actually achieved, less commission and agreed charges, and you bear the risk of a slow morning. Agree the arrangement, the commission rate, the payment terms and the deduction structure in writing before the first pallet leaves the farm. Commission and payment terms are negotiated between grower and wholesaler; no published tariff exists, which is precisely why the written confirmation matters.

Grading and presentation move the price at Leyton as everywhere. The UK marketing standards for fresh fruit and vegetables, with their Class I and Class II specifications, are published on gov.uk and are worth printing for the packing shed.[6] Clean, consistent, clearly labelled packaging in tradable units is the baseline the buyers on a 140-business floor expect, because they can walk twenty metres to a competitor who provides it.

One practical detail specific to this site: the Animal and Plant Health Agency keeps an office at the market itself, in Allen House alongside the Corporation’s administration team and the Spitalfields Market Tenants Association.[5] For import paperwork and plant health questions that is unusually convenient, and the tenants association (020 8556 1479) is the published route for questions about leasing or trading on the market.[3]

What the prices actually are: a worked example on Defra data

Defra publishes average wholesale prices for home-grown horticultural produce, collected from the national wholesale markets: Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and London, where the London collection point is either New Spitalfields or Western International.[7] That makes it the right price series for exactly this decision, and it is updated fortnightly, so check the current release rather than relying on the figures below.

In the week 27 release (published 6 July 2026), iceberg-type crisp lettuce averaged £0.72 per head at national wholesale markets, with a usual range of £0.60 to £0.93.[7] Cos averaged £0.77 a head, butterhead £0.47, little gem £0.76 a twin-pack, and mixed baby-leaf salad in pillow packs £5.17 per kilogram.[7]

Here is what those published prices mean for a real consignment. Take an eastern-counties salad grower with contract surplus sending iceberg to Leyton. The volume, haulage and commission figures below are assumptions for illustration, not market data; the price is Defra’s.

• Consignment: four pallets, roughly 500 heads per pallet, 2,000 heads (assumption)
• Achieved price: Defra week 27 average of £0.72 per head[7] — gross £1,440
• Salesman commission at an assumed 10 per cent: £144
• Haulage, assumed £250 for a shared or return-load lorry from the eastern counties
• Packaging and labels, assumed £120
• Net to grower: about £926, or roughly 46p a head

Two honest conclusions follow. First, at commodity prices measured in pence per head, wholesale consignments are a volume and marginal-return channel, not a windfall: the run pays because the crop is already grown and the alternative is ploughing it back in. Second, the spread matters more than the average. The same Defra release shows the top of the usual iceberg range at 93p, nearly a third above the mean, and that is the difference between a short market on a hot week and an oversupplied one.[7] A salesman who rings you when the market is short is the entire value of the relationship. The comparison with contracted supermarket pricing, and where each channel wins, is worked through in our supermarket contracts versus wholesale pricing guide.

For speciality lines the arithmetic changes shape. Baby-leaf at £5.17 a kilogram and rocket at £5.12 sit in a different bracket from hearted lettuce,[7] and Leyton’s speciality-heavy buyer base is the reason a grower with those crops looks at this market first. Higher-value, lower-volume lines also change the haulage-per-unit sums in the grower’s favour.

Getting there

The market’s address is 23 Sherrin Road, Leyton, E10 5SQ, with direct access to the A12 and easy reach of the M11, the A406 North Circular and Junction 27 of the M25.[5] There are more than 1,800 parking spaces for customers, delivery vehicles and staff.[5] For anyone visiting without a vehicle, the nearest Underground station is Leyton on the Central line, a 10 to 15 minute walk, and the 308 bus runs from the Stratford stations.[5]

Hauliers should note that Leyton is inside the London Low Emission Zone, which covers most of Greater London and applies to HGVs, so the vehicle either meets the LEZ emissions standard (Euro VI for the largest vehicles) or incurs a daily charge. Check the specific vehicle on Transport for London’s LEZ pages before pricing the run.[8]

Is the market staying put?

Fair question, because London’s wholesale markets have been in the news. The City of London Corporation spent several years planning to co-locate its three wholesale markets at Dagenham Dock, obtained outline permission in 2021, and then ended the Dagenham programme as costs rose; in December 2025 Albert Island in the Royal Docks was announced as the preferred site for relocating Smithfield and Billingsgate.[9] New Spitalfields is not part of that move. The Corporation’s position is that the Leyton site, being the most modern of its markets, continues operating where it is.[9] The London Borough of Waltham Forest is meanwhile running a long-term regeneration conversation about the wider Leyton area that includes the market site in its thinking, with no operative change to the market’s trading.[10] For a grower planning a supply relationship on a one-to-three-year horizon, New Spitalfields is the London fruit and vegetable market with the clearest continuity story of the lot.

A first-consignment checklist for Leyton

Six things to do before the first pallet travels.

Visit the market in person on a trading morning. Arrive well after midnight when the floor has settled, wear the hi-viz, walk the Market Hall, and talk to three or four salesmen in your category. The £3 exit fee is the cheapest market research in farming.[4]

Choose the wholesaler deliberately. Take references from other growers, and have the direct conversation about firm price versus sale or return, commission, payment terms and deductions. Confirm all of it in writing, email included, before anything is harvested for the run.

Check the current Defra wholesale price release for your crop so you go into the price conversation knowing the published average and range.[7]

Get grading and packaging right against the gov.uk marketing standards for your category, in clean tradable units with clear labels.[6] On a floor with this many competing wholesalers, presentation is priced in fast.

Plan the logistics around the midnight opening and the HGV tariff: agreed delivery slot, LEZ-compliant vehicle, driver briefed on the site, and out within the five-hour window.[4][8]

Treat the first season as calibration. The relationship that gets a crop looked after in an oversupplied week is built over months of consistent, punctual, well-presented consignments, not over one phone call.

The bottom line

New Spitalfields is the biggest concentration of horticultural wholesale buyers in the country, it publishes its hours and tariffs plainly, and it is the London market with the most settled future. For commodity salad the returns are honest rather than exciting, and the current Defra price series tells you exactly how honest before you load the lorry. For speciality and exotic lines, the depth of the buyer base is genuinely hard to match anywhere in Europe. Do the visit, write the terms down, and let the first season teach you the rest.

Further reading

This guide sits alongside our UK Wholesale Markets 2026 guide to New Covent Garden and Birmingham, which covers the salesman relationship, commission and sale-or-return conventions in full, our UK Supermarket Contracts vs Wholesale Pricing 2026 guide, and our UK Direct Sales and Farm Shop 2026 guide.