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AFO · Exporters

Capital that crosses the border with the business.

Exporters face two distinct capital gaps at once: the up-front cost of entering a new market (research, travel, trade shows, IP protection, translation) and the working-capital cycle of fulfilling export orders (longer DSO, currency exposure, foreign-buyer credit risk). Different instruments cover each gap; the right structure usually layers two or three rather than picking one.

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What makes this industry vertical distinct

  • CanExport SME funds entry costs at 50%, non-repayable.
  • EDC guarantees let domestic lenders stretch on export growth.
  • ABL + factoring + FX hedge modelled as a single working-capital plan.

How the capital stack works for exporters

Exporters, in practice.

CanExport SME funds the entry side — up to 50% of eligible market-entry expenses, capped at $50K per project. Non-dilutive, non-repayable, project-scoped. Eligible expenses are deliberately broad: travel to the target market, trade-show participation, market research, IP protection in the target jurisdiction, translation of marketing materials, digital marketing aimed at the foreign audience. The constraint is that the target market must not currently represent more than 10% of sales — it's a market-entry program, not a market-deepening program.

Export Development Canada (EDC) provides working-capital facilities and loan guarantees that let domestic lenders stretch on businesses growing into new markets. The EDC guarantee covers the incremental risk the chartered bank wouldn't otherwise take, which often makes the difference between getting funded and not when an exporter's growth outpaces the credit committee's comfort. Beside the EDC programs, an ABL revolver scaled to the AR base — including the foreign AR where the customer credit is acceptable — handles the export working-capital cycle for established exporters.

Trade finance — letters of credit, documentary collections, export factoring, foreign-buyer credit insurance — manages the credit-risk side of cross-border fulfilment. Currency hedging through FX forwards and options is a separate but related decision: a profitable USD contract can become an unprofitable one if the loonie strengthens 5% during the production cycle. The CPA models the financing structure and the FX hedge together so the export plan and the capital plan are designed against the same set of assumptions.

8 programs in the catalog · 5 live

Programs that fit exporters.

Curated by underwriting profile, not by tagging — each card links to the program profile. Coming-soon programs are surfaced honestly: the screener routes there with a consultation CTA instead of a self-serve apply link until the integration is wired through.

Common stacks for this vertical

The combinations a CPA usually assembles for exporters.

A stack combines two or more of the programs above into a single capital-structuring answer — equipment + working capital, non-dilutive R&D, grant + debt. Each card names the programs AND the role each one plays.

  • 5 layers

    Exporter stack

    Exporters face two distinct capital gaps simultaneously: the up-front cost of entering a new market (research, travel, trade shows, IP protection, translation) and the working-capital cycle of fulfilling export orders (longer DSO, currency exposure, foreign-buyer credit risk). Different instruments cover each gap; the right structure layers two or three of them together rather than picking one. The CPA designs the financing plan and the FX hedge against the same set of assumptions so the export plan and the capital plan don’t drift apart.

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All curated stacks

Other industries

Different industry, different stack.

Each vertical has its own structuring conversation. A manufacturer’s balance sheet drives a different mix than a SaaS company’s payroll-heavy R&D — the programs that fit each shouldn’t be the same.

  • 9 programs

    Clean tech & sustainability

    Canada has built one of the deepest federal funding stacks in the world for clean technology — SDTC, the Strategic Innovation Fund, the Clean Tech Investment Tax Credit, IRAP, SR&ED, and the regional development agencies all touch clean-tech projects in different ways. The skill is layering them coherently so the project carries the lowest blended cost of capital without disqualifying itself from any individual program by stacking-rule conflict.

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  • 6 programs

    Construction & trades

    Construction and trades businesses share a tough working-capital profile: equipment-heavy balance sheets, long holdbacks on completed projects, and lumpy payment cycles tied to the general contractor's release schedule. The right capital stack matches the structure of those cash flows — equipment finance on the asset side, factoring or ABL on the receivables side, and CSBFP underneath both when the business qualifies.

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  • 6 programs

    Professional services

    Professional-services firms — accounting, law, engineering, consulting, design, healthcare practices, agencies — share a hard underwriting profile from a conventional lender's perspective: low hard-asset coverage, payroll-heavy fixed cost, lumpy project economics. The right capital stack works around that profile rather than against it: leasehold financing where the asset is the office build-out, equipment finance for tech and infrastructure, and structures that underwrite on cash flow rather than collateral.

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All industries

Match the structure to the industry, not the other way round.

Twenty-minute call. Bring the business profile and the project; we’ll walk through which programs in this vertical fit, which grants and credits stack underneath, and how long the engagement takes.

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