Market Access Assessment

What’s included

• Whether your product falls inside the destination regulator’s food scope, and which category it lands in
• The registration or notification route for that category, step by step, with the authority responsible at each stage
• Who is legally able to hold the registration in that market, and what that means for your distribution agreement
• Which CFIA export certificates the destination requires, and whether your establishment can currently obtain them
• Labelling particulars that will force artwork changes: identified before you print, not after a shipment is held
• Your tariff classification with the duty position and any preferential rate, each cited to its primary source and dated
• A written go or no-go recommendation with the reasoning set out, not a score

What you actually receive

Two worked examples, free to download and nothing to fill in first. The companies in them are invented, and each says so on its own cover. Every regulatory value inside was read off a primary source and is cited with the date it was read, the same as everywhere else on this site: a sample built on invented numbers would teach you to distrust the real pages.

• PDF · 3 pages · illustrative

  Frozen Atlantic lobster into Vietnam and Singapore

  Vietnam charges 27 per cent on this line and nothing under CPTPP, which on a CAD 3 million programme is CAD 810,000 a year decided entirely by origin documentation. Shows how the assessment sizes a preference, then says what has to be true of your plant before the saving is real.

  Download the sample

• PDF · 3 pages · illustrative

  Branded rolled oats into Malaysia and Indonesia

  A retail product where duty is almost irrelevant and the halal certifier decides the map: of the four Canadian bodies on any recognition list, exactly one is recognised by both Malaysia and Indonesia. Shows the assessment finding the constraint that a tariff schedule never shows you.

  Download the sample

Commercial terms

Fee range

Scoped per engagement

Typical timeline

Confirmed at scoping

Questions

Can you tell me whether my product can enter before I pay for anything?

Often yes. If there is a hard blocker (a category closed to Canadian origin, or a certificate your establishment cannot currently obtain) it usually surfaces in a short conversation, and that conversation is worth having first. What the assessment buys is everything after that: the sequence, the licence-holder question, the labelling changes, and the classification with its duty position sourced rather than assumed.

We already have a distributor. Is this still worth doing?

More so. The two questions that decide what happens if the relationship ends (whose name the registration is filed in, and who controls it afterwards) are settled in the distribution agreement, and they are far harder to renegotiate later. We read what you have agreed and tell you what it commits you to.

Do you guarantee the registration will be approved?

No, and nobody honest will. Approval sits with the destination regulator and depends on the dossier, the product and the regulator’s own queue. What we control is that the dossier is complete and correct on first filing, because the usual cause of delay is a resubmission rather than a refusal.

How current is the regulatory information you give me?

Every value carries the primary source it came from and the date we last checked it. Where something is not yet verified we say so rather than estimating it. That is the basis this entire site is published on.

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.

• Twelve Canadian products we believe could travel well

  A shortlist, with the tariff position under each one. Some are obvious and priced accordingly. The interesting ones are where a high general rate meets a preference, because that is where an agreement does commercial work rather than paperwork.

• Opportunities for Canadian lobster in Southeast Asian hospitality

  Vietnam charges 27 per cent on frozen lobster at the general rate and nothing under CPTPP. That single line is worth more than most Canadian seafood exporters spend on an entire market entry, and it is decided by paperwork rather than by the agreement existing.

• Five hotel products that can be sourced from Canada

  Food service buys differently from retail: to a plate cost, a specification and a season, with no shelf to win. Five Canadian lines fit that channel in Southeast Asia, and the tariff position separates them sharply by market.

• Why Canadian oats belong in premium Asian breakfast brands

  Vietnam charges nothing on raw oats and 15 per cent on rolled ones. CPTPP takes the rolled line to free, which is what makes it possible to export the branded product rather than the raw grain and hand the milling margin to somebody in-market.

• Canadian ingredients for functional beverages

  Frozen wild blueberries face 30 per cent into Vietnam at the general rate and nothing under CPTPP. Whey protein and lactose are already free there. For a formulator building a drink, that is the difference between a Canadian ingredient and a substitute.

• Why maple is more than pancake syrup

  Bulk and retail maple share one tariff line and are two completely different businesses. The customs schedule cannot tell them apart; the regulator, the buyer and your margin all can, and choosing which one you are in is the decision that sets everything else.

• What Singapore buyers need from Canadian food producers

  Singapore charges no duty on almost everything a Canadian food producer sells, which sounds like the easy market and makes it the demanding one. With price at the border identical for every supplier on earth, the account is won on documentation and reliability.

• Start with Vietnam: why the six markets are not one decision

  "ASEAN entry" is a phrase that costs money. These are six regulators, six registration routes and two entirely different tariff positions, and entering them in the wrong order is how a budget gets spent proving something the first market would have told you. A sequence, and the reasoning behind it.

• Which Canadian halal certifiers Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore actually recognise

  Four Canadian bodies appear on at least one of the three recognition lists. Only one appears on all three. A producer holding the wrong certificate has a valid certificate and no market, and the gap is invisible until a consignment is stopped.

• The list is not the hard part: what the Trade Commissioner Service does, and where it stops

  Canada already runs a service that assesses a market for you and hands you a list of qualified distributors. Any adviser whose pitch is "we will find you names" is selling what you can ask Ottawa for. What the TCS covers, what it asks of you first, and the months after the list where entries stall.

• Establishment approval: the gate that opens before the sale

  Four of the six markets vet the Canadian plant before they will look at the product. What each one asks for, which of them audits on site, and why this belongs at the start of a commercial conversation rather than the end.

• What a CFIA export certificate proves, and what it does not

  The certificate is the last document in the chain, not the first. What has to be true before the CFIA will issue one, what the certificate actually attests, and the four ways exporters lose a shipment after holding one.

• CPTPP on this route: which three markets it reaches, and what it asks of you

  Preference is not a property of the agreement, it is a property of your tariff line plus your origin documentation. Where CPTPP applies among these six markets, where nothing applies, and how a claim is actually made.

• Who pays for market entry: why food exporters sit outside CanExport, and inside AgriMarketing

  CanExport SMEs is the programme every Canadian exporter has heard of, and the wrong one for a food business: the sector was moved out of it. The programme that now carries agri-food pays a larger share, stays open for years rather than weeks, and asks for the market work an ASEAN entry needs anyway.

• Halal for Malaysia and Indonesia: two markets, two recognised lists

  A halal certificate is only worth what the destination recognises. Which Canadian certifiers Malaysia and Indonesia each accept, why the lists differ, and why the CFIA will not settle the question for you.

• Importing food into Singapore: licence, permit, and the fee per consignment

  Singapore is the most open of the six markets on tariffs and the most procedural at the border. What the SFA licence covers, why the permit is per consignment, and the per-consignment fees that decide whether small shipments make sense.

• The Philippines: no plant approval, and four ways to lose the container anyway

  The Philippines does not vet the Canadian establishment before export, which makes it look like the easiest of the six. The detentions happen at labelling, consignment composition and the annexes instead.

Markets this covers

Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore