Cranberry Beans: export from Canada to Southeast Asia

Cranberry beans are bought largely for appearance: the mottled cream-and-red pattern is the product, and it fades to a uniform pale colour on cooking, which surprises buyers who have only seen the dry bean. Confirm that the destination application actually wants the dry appearance, not the cooked one.

The commercial risk is the same as for pinto: pattern definition dulls with age and warm storage, so crop year and storage history are real terms for retail packing.

Specification points are size grade, pattern definition, moisture, foreign material and defect tolerance.

Canadian production is modest and concentrated in Ontario, which sets the routing. Volumes are smaller than for the major beans, so a continuous programme needs forward contracting instead of spot buying, and a buyer should expect availability, not price, to be the constraint in a short year.

As with other dry beans, classification follows species and preparation, not the marketing name. Send us the form and the destination market and we will confirm how it is classified and what the duty costs, and show you where that comes from.