How long does the assessment take?

A standard readiness diagnostic runs two to three weeks from the point we receive your documents, including a site visit where the production process is material to the outcome. Larger multi-product businesses take longer, and we will say so before you commit.

We have never exported. Is this too early?

It is the right time. The assessment is considerably cheaper before you have committed to a buyer, and the roadmap it produces is what most first-time exporters are missing when they start negotiating.

How is this different from your EUDR service?

Export readiness is the general question: can you export at all, to anywhere. EUDR is a specific regulatory regime affecting seven commodity groups entering the EU. If your product is cocoa, coffee, timber, rubber, palm oil, soy or cattle and your market is the EU, you will need both, and the readiness assessment will tell you that in its first week.

What if the assessment concludes we are not ready?

That is a useful result, and a cheap one. The roadmap tells you what readiness would cost and how long it would take, which is exactly the information needed to decide whether to proceed, defer, or pursue a different market. We would rather tell you this than take a fee for a programme that was never going to clear customs.

Do you work in French?

Yes. Assessment, interviews, documentation and the final report are delivered in English or French, and document templates are supplied bilingually where the receiving authority requires French.

Will you find us a buyer?

No, and you should be skeptical of any adviser who promises it as part of a readiness engagement. Buyer identification is separate work, and it is wasted effort until the file behind it can survive scrutiny.

Export Readiness

Can your file survive a
buyer's due diligence?

Export deals in Central Africa are rarely lost on price. They are lost on paperwork that does not reconcile, origin that cannot be proven, and a supplier who cannot demonstrate they will still be able to ship in six months. Export readiness establishes, before you spend money chasing a market, whether your business, your product and your documentation would withstand that scrutiny.

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The problem

The order is real.
The file is not.

A buyer in Rotterdam or Abidjan expresses interest. The exporter quotes, the buyer asks for a sample and a document list, and the deal stalls there, not because the product was wrong, but because nobody could produce a certificate of origin that matched the invoice, or explain why the HS code on the declaration differed from the one on the contract.

By the time this surfaces, money has usually been spent: on travel, on samples, sometimes on a container that is now sitting in a yard accruing demurrage. A readiness assessment moves that discovery to the front, where it is cheap.

The output is not a report that says “improve your processes”. It is a list of specific things that are missing, what each one costs to fix, how long it takes, and who has to do it.

Illustrative scorecard · cocoa exporter, first assessment 4 blocking

01 Commercial intent Ready

02 Product & packaging Ready

03 HS classification Gap

04 Rules of origin Blocking

05 Documentation Gap

06 Traceability Blocking

07 Production capacity Ready

08 Logistics & route Gap

09 Trade finance & FX Blocking

10 Organisation & systems Gap

What we assess

Ten dimensions

Readiness is not a single question. A business can be commercially ready and documentarily hopeless, or immaculate on paper with no capacity to repeat the order.

Commercial intent

Is there an identified buyer, at a volume and price that survives contact with your real cost base? We test the deal before we test the paperwork.

Product & packaging

Grade, moisture, residue limits, labelling and packaging against the destination market’s actual requirements, not the generic ones.

HS classification

The correct HS heading for your product, and the duty, licensing and preference consequences that follow from it. Misclassification is the most common and most expensive error we find.

Rules of origin

Whether the product genuinely qualifies for the preference you intend to claim, and whether you hold the records to prove it if the claim is challenged after clearance.

Documentation

The complete file a customs officer, a bank and a buyer will each accept, and, critically, whether the documents reconcile with one another.

Traceability

Whether you can evidence where the raw material came from, to the level of granularity your destination market requires, for EU-bound commodities, increasingly to the plot.

Production capacity

Whether you can repeat the shipment at the same quality and on schedule. A buyer is purchasing a supply relationship, not a container.

Logistics & route

Route, mode, cost per tonne, realistic transit time, handling and storage at the port, and which Incoterm places the risk where you can actually manage it.

Trade finance & FX

Payment instrument and terms, bank domiciliation of the export contract, and the exchange-control obligations attaching to the proceeds.

Organisation & systems

Who owns export inside the business, what system holds the records, and whether the knowledge survives one person leaving.

What exporters actually need

The precise list varies by product and destination. The structure does not. Most first-time exporters have three or four of these and assume the rest can be produced on demand.

The document stack

Legal identity

RCCM registration, unique taxpayer identifier (NIU), and tax standing where an attestation is required. The trading entity on the invoice must be the entity that holds these.

Exporter status

Registration or authorisation to export, where the product category requires it. Some commodity lines carry additional sector approvals or quota arrangements.

Origin

Certificate of origin from the chamber of commerce (CCIMA), and the specific AfCFTA certificate where the continental preference is being claimed, supported by the production records behind it.

Sanitary and phytosanitary

Phytosanitary certification for plant products through the agriculture ministry, or veterinary certification for animal products, issued against inspection of the actual consignment.

Sector-specific evidence

Forestry legality documentation for timber; for the commodities covered by the EU Deforestation Regulation, the geolocation and legality evidence your EU buyer will need for their due diligence statement.

Customs

Export declaration lodged through the single-window and customs system, plus transit documentation where the consignment moves to a landlocked destination.

Banking and exchange control

Domiciliation of the export contract with a local bank, and compliance with CEMAC rules on repatriation of export proceeds. This obligation catches a surprising number of exporters after the goods have already shipped.

Transport and insurance

Bill of lading or waybill, cargo insurance, and an Incoterm chosen deliberately rather than copied from the last quotation.

THE DELIVERABLES

Your export-ready toolkit

Readiness scorecard: all ten dimensions scored against defined evidence thresholds, with the basis for each score stated.
Gap register: every gap listed individually, classified as blocking, material or improvable.
Costed remediation roadmap: what each fix costs, how long it takes, who owns it, and the order they must be done in.
Document pack: templates and worked examples for the documents you are missing, in English or French.
Buyer-facing capability statement: a short document you can send to a prospective buyer that answers their diligence questions before they ask.

Questions

Before you commit

How long does the assessment take?
A standard readiness diagnostic runs two to three weeks from the point we receive your documents, including a site visit where the production process is material to the outcome. Larger multi-product businesses take longer, and we will say so before you commit.
We have never exported. Is this too early?
It is the right time. The assessment is considerably cheaper before you have committed to a buyer, and the roadmap it produces is what most first-time exporters are missing when they start negotiating.
How is this different from your EUDR service?
Export readiness is the general question: can you export at all, to anywhere. EUDR is a specific regulatory regime affecting seven commodity groups entering the EU. If your product is cocoa, coffee, timber, rubber, palm oil, soy or cattle and your market is the EU, you will need both, and the readiness assessment will tell you that in its first week.
What if the assessment concludes we are not ready?
That is a useful result, and a cheap one. The roadmap tells you what readiness would cost and how long it would take, which is exactly the information needed to decide whether to proceed, defer, or pursue a different market. We would rather tell you this than take a fee for a programme that was never going to clear customs.
Do you work in French?
Yes. Assessment, interviews, documentation and the final report are delivered in English or French, and document templates are supplied bilingually where the receiving authority requires French.
Will you find us a buyer?
No, and you should be skeptical of any adviser who promises it as part of a readiness engagement. Buyer identification is separate work, and it is wasted effort until the file behind it can survive scrutiny.

Can your file survive abuyer's due diligence?

The order is real. The file is not.