Southeast Asian producers
Selling into Canada
You know your product. You need someone in Canada who knows the rules, watches the quality, and does not work for the buyer. That is us.
The gap
Everyone who understands Canada is already working for your buyer
Canada has plenty of people who know its food import rules. Customs brokers, labelling specialists, the compliance staff inside importers. Nearly all of them are paid by the Canadian buyer.
So you meet the rules late, and you hear them from the other side of your own negotiation. When your buyer says the label is wrong or the grade is short, you have no independent way to check.
A trade office will introduce you to buyers, which is worth having. It stops at the introduction.
Whether your product may enter, who holds the licence, and what the label must say are what turn that introduction into an order.
What we do
We act for you in Canada
Think of it as having your own office here, without opening one. We are on your side of the table, not your buyer’s.
Check the goods
We look at what is actually in the container against what you sold, before your buyer does. A grade dispute you hear about first is a conversation. One you hear about from the buyer is a deduction.
Hold the price
We sit in the negotiation knowing what comparable Canadian and imported product is going for, so a discount has to be argued for rather than assumed.
Run the import tasks
The licence question, the preventive control plan, the commodity lookup, the label artwork, the certificates your buyer will ask for. We do the work and tell you what it costs before it starts.
Keep the others moving
Brokers, freight forwarders, testing labs and the buyer’s compliance team all have a piece of this. Somebody has to chase them. That is a job, and it is ours.
Before you ship
Four things that decide whether the container lands
01
Somebody needs an import licence
CFIA is plain about it: a licence is required to import food, including ingredients. The first question is who holds it, and the answer is not automatically you.
02
The control plan comes first
A written plan covering how the food is kept safe and compliant. CFIA wants it in place before the licence application, so it sets your timeline rather than tidying up after it.
03
The rules change with the product
CFIA sets requirements by commodity, origin, destination and end use, through the Automated Import Reference System. Your product and your country both move the answer.
04
Your label will be read
Canada sets its own standards, grades, net quantity and labelling, and inspectors check them. Artwork that passes at home or in the United States proves nothing here.
What we do not know yet
The honest boundary on this page
Your product decides most of it
Canada sets import requirements by commodity, origin and end use. Nothing on this page replaces looking your own product up, and that is the first thing we do.
Who may hold the licence
Can you hold a Canadian import licence yourself, or do you need a party established here? That answer shapes everything else, so we settle it against the regulation for your case rather than assuming.
We are not your customs broker
Clearance, freight and duty are licensed work that belongs to somebody else, and we will introduce you. What we own is whether the product may enter, what the label must say, and keeping the rest of them moving.
The requirements described above were read from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on 6 September 2026.