OSS & H Export Company Limited was established in 2008 and registered as an export company with the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), dealing in off-season tomato farming using special tomato seeds from Israel that produce high yielding tomato varieties with harvests of about 10 tons/acre from tomato trees.

Due to harsh climatic conditions, the farm was abandoned in 2009. The company later started production of cassava chips and papaya the following year, producing modest but moderate results.

In 2018, OSS & H farms metamorphosed into export marketing and trade services hence the name Candela Export and Import Marketing Company Limited (CANEXIM).

This was necessitated after the Directors of the company (Board Chairman of Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF), now EXIM bank and Director of the Export Finance Company (EFC)) who have over 70 years of practical expertise and experience between them, observed high potentials of the export trade as well as challenges that bedevil the Non- Traditional Export (NTE) sector and teamed up to fill a vacuum created by lack of financial support, inadequate storage infrastructure, difficulty in locating markets for export products, challenges in handling and transportation of export products among others.

Candela Export and Import Company in this light provides support in growing Ghana’s Non-Traditional Export sector through a project intervention that is designed to make the company a player in the export industry as well as help Ghana reap maximum benefit from its export endeavors. The project is designed to stimulate market for promising state processing/manufacturing institutions to both access bigger markets for their products as well as finances to increase production, not forgetting the several district factories that are being constructed under the government’s IDIF project which is envisaged to churn out several exportable products in the economy.

CANEXIM has positioned itself for the export of both agricultural raw material, semi-processed as well as highly processed agricultural products from Ghana to the outside world.

The intervention comprises rendering Agency Services, providing Warehousing/Online Marketing and Factoring. CANEXIM liaises with overseas offtakers for non-traditional exportable products on commission basis.

Being agents for NTEs, CANEXIM creates market for the non-traditional products ((particularly Raw/Processed Cashew Nuts; Cassava, i.e., starch, cassava chips and high quality cassava flour; Shea nuts/butter, handicrafts as well as processed and raw fruits) and then contract local exports to supply the requested products to the offtakers.

CANEXIM also tackles the marketing challenges through Online Warehousing as well as Overseas Warehousing challenges of Ghanaian exporters at the international level and the rental of warehouses in the top five export destinations of Ghana’s NTEs.

The targeted countries where the warehouses are situated are the Netherlands, the United States of America (USA), Vietnam, United Kingdom and Germany.

CANEXIM also bridges the export finance gap by providing pre-funding interventions for exporters. This involves pre-financing exporters for whatever they produce immediately products are taken up by CANEXIM.

This arrangement literally frees the exporter to focus on their core business of producing exportable products without breaks that result from cashflow.