NAICS 411110Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market

Live animal merchant wholesalers

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling live animals. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 221
Under 10 employeesA: 67%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–410648%

5–94319%

10–193516%

20–493415%

50–9931%

100–1990—

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 221 Canadian establishments with employees, 67% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario7132%

Quebec3516%

Alberta3415%

Saskatchewan3014%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Wholesale Trade, US · opened 2020

82.8%

1 year

64.3%

3 years

51.2%

5 years

34.4%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 411, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 411 Farm product merchant wholesalers

Elevators and handling capital, thin margins on volume, and a market consolidated around a few grain companies.

Who sets the price: Commodity markets; the merchant earns a handling margin.
The software it runs on: Grain accounting, contracts and position management.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4111 Farm product merchant wholesalers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4111

Specialty Grain & Pulse MerchantStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

The reachable business in this group is not the elevator company — the Grain Handling & Ag Retail record screens that and cuts on steel. It is the merchant without an elevator: a desk, a grain dealer licence and relationships on both sides, buying lentils, peas, organics or identity-preserved crops from farmers and selling them to processors and export buyers. 60% of the 1,215 Canadian establishments have fewer than ten people, so the form plainly exists. The cut is the balance sheet that form needs. Canadian farm product wholesalers turned over $61.6B in 2024 at a 6.7% gross margin and a 2.0% operating profit [A]. A merchant on those margins owes farmers for whole truckloads while waiting on a buyer overseas, so one defaulted contract or one price move between purchase and sale consumes a year's profit. The regulator's own record shows how often that happens. The Canadian Grain Commission makes every licensed dealer post security against what it owes producers, and its 2024-25 programme evaluation counts nine licensed-company failures between 2018 and 2024 with about $42M of producer claims paid — and in two of the nine the security fell short, paying 80% and 77% [A]. The names on that list are pulse and specialty merchants, not line elevator companies. The same evaluation records licensees and farm groups calling the security regime a barrier to new and smaller entrants. Capital here is not equipment; it is the bond, the credit line and the ability to survive a counterparty. Livestock dealing and nursery stock, also inside this code, were not examined.

NAICS 41115 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 411 Farm product merchant wholesalers

Grain Handling & Ag RetailStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

Elevators, dryers and blending equipment are eight-figure assets serving a farm customer whose own margin is thin, and the majors — the line companies and the co-ops — set the basis a smaller handler has to work inside. The agronomy retail attached to it is a credit business: inputs are extended in spring against a harvest that may not come. The wholesale survey puts numbers on how thin that is. Canadian farm product merchant wholesalers turned over $61.6B in 2024 at a 6.7% gross margin and a 2.0% operating profit, and both have been falling — 7.8% and 3.0% in 2022 [A]. Against a two-cent margin, the counterparties keep getting larger: Bunge Global took Viterra into itself on 2 July 2025 and its net sales went from $53.1B to $70.3B in a single year, beside ADM at $80.3B and The Andersons, the listed mid-sized North American handler and ag retailer, at $11.0B [A]. An entrant is therefore sinking eight figures of steel to earn two cents on the dollar, in a basis set by firms whose turnover alone exceeds the whole Canadian industry group. The form inside this code that does not require the elevator — the merchant trading specialty crops from a desk — is screened separately at 4111, and cuts on the bond rather than on the concrete.

NAICS 4116 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Grain accounting, contracts and position management.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Wholesale trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 16.6%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 9.2%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 8.7%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 8.5%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 7.3%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 6.8%

Supervisors, processing and manufacturing occupations Mostly one sector 6.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.8%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.5%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 5.3%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 10.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 7.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 6.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.2%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 5.1%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.8%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →