Importing frozen food into Canada commercially is very doable for a small business — thousands do it — but it is a sequenced process. Skip a step and the cost usually shows up at the worst moment: a container held at the port, thawing, while paperwork catches up.
This guide walks the sequence in order: licence, food-safety plan, classification, CARM, the real landed-cost math, cold chain, labelling, and clearance. It's written for a first commercial shipment, in plain language, with every regulatory claim linked to its official source.
To import most food into Canada, the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations require a licence issued by the CFIA. The practical details:
If you're not sure whether your specific product needs a licence, CFIA publishes an interactive licensing tool — but for frozen food destined for resale, the safe assumption is yes.
The SFCR (SOR/2018-108, s.47) requires most food importers to prepare and keep a written Preventive Control Plan — the document that shows how you control food-safety risks. It is not a border filing; it's the plan a CFIA inspector asks to see.
For frozen food, a credible PCP centres on a few specific hazards:
Writing one from scratch is the single most intimidating piece of paperwork for a first-time food importer. It's also the piece where a good template gets you 90% of the way — TariffWise's free PCP generator drafts a 12-section plan matched to your commodity, which you then review and finish with your food-safety reviewer.
Every product crossing a border carries an HS code — think of it as a postal code for goods. The first six digits are international; Canada extends them for precision. Your HS code plus your country of origin together determine your duty rate.
Two things worth knowing early:
Classification is ultimately a legal determination — confirm your exact tariff item with your customs broker or via a CBSA ruling, and verify rates at tariffinder.ca before committing to a shipment where the duty matters.
Since January 1, 2026, every commercial importer must hold their own registration in the CBSA's CARM Client Portal and post their own financial security to have goods released before payment — a broker's business number can no longer stand in for yours. For frozen goods, where a border delay means thaw risk, Release Prior to Payment is effectively mandatory.
This is its own topic — see our companion guide: CARM Registration in 2026: A Small Importer's Guide. Short version: register early, budget for a minimum $5,000 security bond, and delegate authority to your broker inside the portal. The exact bond math — including the cash-deposit route with no minimum — is in our RPP bond calculation guide.
The number that decides whether your import makes money is not the supplier's price — it's the landed cost: everything spent getting the goods from the supplier's freezer to yours, cleared.
Duty = Product cost × duty rate (per product line) GST = (Product cost + duty) × 5% Landed cost = Product + duty + freight + GST + fees
Two details first-timers miss:
And the fee lines people forget to budget: customs brokerage, port and terminal handling, a reserve for a possible CBSA examination, inland transport from the port, and cold storage — the line that separates frozen-food math from everything else.
TariffWise's free cost estimator runs this exact math with your numbers, and every duty rate in it cites the CBSA tariff item it was read from.
Because for frozen food, it is. Before the container ships:
Food sold at retail in Canada needs a compliant bilingual label — common name, net quantity, ingredient list, allergen declarations and more, in English and French. Foodservice and institutional buyers trigger different obligations than retail shelves, so who you sell to changes what your label needs.
Fixing a label after 20,000 units are printed and frozen is the expensive version. Checking the required elements before your supplier prints is the cheap one — TariffWise's label builder walks the element list and drafts the French mirror, advisory and element by element.
The formal customs entry is filed by a licensed customs broker for nearly all commercial importers. Everything above is what makes that conversation short and cheap: you arrive with your SFC licence number, your CARM registration with the broker delegated, your HS codes and certificate of origin, your commercial invoice and packing list, and cold storage booked.
A broker can rescue a badly prepared shipment at the border — expensively. What they can't do is retroactively fix a missing licence or an unregistered importer. The sequence is the strategy.
Budget several weeks before your first shipment: the SFC licence alone can take up to 15 business days, and CARM registration plus a security bond has its own lead time. None of it is hard; all of it is sequential.
Practically, yes — the formal entry is broker-filed for nearly all commercial imports. The preparation doesn't replace the broker; it makes you a better, cheaper client.
Many frozen-vegetable tariff lines are MFN Free (frozen edamame, 0710.29.00, among them) — but rates are line-specific and processed foods differ. Verify your exact 8-digit tariff item at tariffinder.ca.
No meaningful one. The SFC licence, the PCP, and CARM registration all apply to commercial importers regardless of size.