Exporting to China

If you want to export seafood from Canada to China, the good news is that the pathway is knowable. It is not a maze; it is a sequence, and every step has a named authority, a defined output and a place where first-timers predictably stumble.

The sequence runs through two governments. On the Canadian side, the CFIA licenses your establishment under the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations, lists it as approved for export, and issues the health certificates that travel with each shipment. On the Chinese side, GACC (China's customs authority) registers foreign establishments under Decree 280, which took effect June 1, 2026 and replaced the old Decree 248 regime. Because aquatic products are classed as higher risk, your plant cannot self-register: the CFIA must recommend it to GACC through the CIFER portal. The two systems are not separate projects. They are one pathway, and the Canadian end comes first.

What goes wrong, when it goes wrong, is rarely dramatic and almost always expensive. A licence that covers processing but not export. A registration application that stalls on scope. A label missing a registration number. A health certificate that disagrees with the packing list by one product form. Any of these can leave a container waiting at a port while product ages and a buyer cools. None of them are hard to prevent, which is the entire argument for walking the pathway with someone who has walked it before.

That is the role we play. We are a navigator and coordinator, not an issuer: CFIA and GACC grant every licence, registration and certificate, and our job is making sure what reaches them is complete, consistent and right the first time. On the commercial side we bring the buyer, currently purchasing at multiple-container volume, we secure payment before product leaves the dock, and we work on a success-based commission. And the timing matters: China's tariff on Canadian aquatic products was suspended on March 1, 2026 with the suspension running to the end of 2026, so the suppliers who start the pathway now are the ones whose product ships inside the window.