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BBoreal Trade

Service

Export Documentation Desk

A distributor asks for your product sheet and you do not have one. What you have is a recipe, a nutrition panel somewhere, a label file sitting with the printer, case dimensions in an old email and a rough idea what a pallet weighs. None of it is in a form you can send. So the reply takes three weeks, arrives as five attachments that disagree with each other, and by then the buyer has moved on to somebody who answered in a day. This is not a regulatory problem and it is not a sales problem. It is that nobody has ever sat down and written the product up once, properly, in the form the other side expects. It is the cheapest thing on this list to fix and the most common reason a good product never gets quoted.

What’s included

  • A specification sheet per product a distributor can act on: format, pack, weights, shelf life and storage conditions, in one document instead of four
  • Your ingredient and allergen records written down once and held in one place, so an allergen question takes an hour to answer rather than a week
  • Packaging captured properly: case configuration, dimensions, weights and pallet pattern, which is what a buyer costs a container from
  • Country of origin documentation assembled and held, because a preference claim under a trade agreement rests on it and gets asked for after the order, not before
  • Classification research per product: the candidate heading, the reasoning behind it and the evidence a customs broker needs to confirm it
  • A landed cost worksheet you can quote from, carrying the duty position for each market and marking plainly which lines are yours to fill in
  • A distributor-ready product sheet: the whole pack as one file you send as it is, rather than rewriting it for every enquiry
  • Expiry tracking across the pack, so a certificate that lapses is caught by us and not by your buyer
  • The gaps named and chased. Where a document does not exist yet you get told what it is, who issues it, roughly what it costs and how long it takes

Ways to buy this

Each one builds on the one before it. Take the next only when the products or markets you carry make it worth the money, and not before. We will tell you when that is, including when it is not yet.

Product pack

CAD 750–1,499 per product

Our recommendation

You have one product, or a few, and nothing you would be willing to send a buyer. This is the whole thing built once, per product, and it is yours whether or not you ever buy anything else from us.

What you get

  • Everything listed above, assembled for one product and delivered as a pack you own
  • A working session on the formulation, the pack and what you already hold, so the questions are asked once
  • Classification research written up with its reasoning, in the form a broker can confirm from
  • A landed cost worksheet per market you name, prefilled with the duty position we publish
  • A gap list: what is missing, who issues it, what it costs and what it blocks

Documentation desk

CAD 299–799 per month

The pack exists and now has to stay true. Reformulations, new pack sizes, a certificate coming up for renewal, and the questions buyers send that take a day to answer from scratch.

Everything in Product pack, plus

  • The pack kept current through reformulations, supplier changes and new pack sizes
  • Expiry dates watched and raised with enough notice to act rather than to worry
  • Buyer document requests answered from the pack, so a distributor question does not land on your production manager
  • New products added to the pack at the lower end of the band, because the ingredient, packaging and origin work overlaps with what is already built

Ways to shape the fee

  • Priced per product. Where it lands in the band depends on how much already exists: a producer with a current nutrition panel and a print-ready label file sits at the bottom of it, one starting from a recipe and a photograph sits at the top.
  • The monthly desk is optional and starts when the pack is delivered. A product that is not going to change does not need it, and we will tell you so.
  • Laboratory testing, translation, certifier fees and any government fee are charged at cost, with no margin added.

What you actually receive

A worked example, free to download and nothing to fill in first. The company in it is invented and says so on its own cover. The costs and requirements are real ones for real markets, so what you see is what this service produces for a product of your own.

  • PDF · 5 pages · illustrative

    Retail maple syrup, 250 ml and 500 ml glass

    The whole pack for one product: specification, allergen record, case and pallet data, grade and origin, the classification written up for a broker to confirm, a landed cost worksheet across all six markets, and a gap register naming what is missing and what each gap blocks. Shows what a distributor is actually sent, and what we hand back when the answer is that you do not have something yet.

    Download the sample

Who else you will need

These sit next to this engagement and we do not do them. They are licensed or credentialed work, and we would do them worse than the people who do them all day.

We will introduce you, and coordinate across them so nothing falls in a gap.

Confirming the tariff classification
A licensed customs broker, or CBSA through an advance ruling. We do the research and hand over the reasoning and the evidence, which is most of the cost and all of the delay. The binding call is theirs, and on a product where the record does not settle it, that call is worth paying for.
Laboratory analysis for a nutrition panel or a shelf life claim
An accredited food laboratory. We tell you which tests the destination expects and read the results back into the pack, so the number on the sheet is one you can stand behind.
Label artwork and print
Your designer and your printer. We check the artwork against the destination requirement before the print run, which is the cheap moment to find a problem with it.

Quoted separately

These sit outside the retainer. We price them in writing before starting, every time, including the small ones: a boundary you can see is worth more to you than one you discover on an invoice.

  • Registering the product with a destination regulator. That is Product Registration, and it needs this pack to exist first.
  • Designing or artworking the label. We tell you what has to be on it and check what you have against the destination requirement; a designer sets it.
  • Finding the distributor. The pack is what you send once you have somebody to send it to.
  • The document set for a specific consignment. That is Shipment Documentation, and it starts once you have an order.

Commercial terms

Fee range
CAD 750–1,499 per product, then CAD 299–799 per month if maintained
Typical timeline
Two to three weeks for the first product pack, about a week for each one after it

Questions

We already have a spec sheet. Is this worth paying for?
Send it and we will tell you honestly. If it carries the pack, the weights, the shelf life, the allergens and an origin statement, and a distributor could act on it without sending a follow-up question, you do not need us for that product. Most of the sheets we are sent are a sales one-pager with a photograph, which is a different document doing a different job.
Do you guarantee the tariff classification?
No, and nobody who is not a licensed broker should. What we do is the research: the candidate heading, the reasoning, and the evidence behind it, written up in the form a broker confirms from. That is most of the cost and all of the delay. Making it binding is a broker or a CBSA advance ruling, and we will tell you when a product is worth that step.
What happens when a document does not exist yet?
That is the common case, and handling it is the point of the service rather than an exception to it. You get told what is missing, who issues it, roughly what it costs and how long it takes. A gap you know the shape of is a decision. A gap you find out about from a buyer is a lost order.
Is this only useful if we are exporting to Southeast Asia?
Most of the pack is not country specific: a specification sheet, allergen records, packaging data and origin documentation are the same document wherever you send them. What is country specific is the duty position and the labelling notes, and those are the parts we source and date per market. A producer approaching a distributor anywhere gets the rest of it either way.
Can we start with one product?
Yes, and that is the usual shape. The first pack takes two to three weeks, because that is where the questions get asked and the ingredient, packaging and origin work gets done from scratch. Each product after it takes about a week, since most of that groundwork carries over. One product done properly tells you whether the rest of the range is worth doing, and it costs less than finding out the other way.

Read before you brief us

The reasoning behind this work, written out in full and free to read. You will brief us better for having read it, and you may decide you do not need us for part of it.

Some of this is already published

This page describes work we would do for you. Part of the answer is written already, read off the regulator and dated, and it costs nothing to check it before you decide whether you need us.