About Baltic InCan Trade
I'm Shanky Gondal, the founder. Here's how eight countries and a career in hospitality turned into an import-export business.
The path here
I'm a Canadian citizen, born and raised in Vancouver, and I've spent most of my adult life outside of Canada — living and working across eight countries in North America and Europe. I ran sightseeing operations for Gray Line and Big Bus in Vancouver, then spent years as a general manager for hotels and hostels in Hamburg, Cologne, and Vienna, before eventually settling between Germany and Tallinn, Estonia, where my fiancée is based.
Hospitality puts you in a strange, useful position: every day, you're the person standing between two sides who've never met — a guest and a city, a traveler and a place to sleep — making sure both trust the exchange enough to have a good experience. Do that across enough countries, and you start noticing the same pattern everywhere else. The coffee in the breakfast buffet, the toiletries in the guest bathroom, the almonds in the snack bowl at reception — nearly everything had already crossed two or three borders before it reached the table. Trade wasn't an abstract economic idea to me. It was the invisible layer underneath every hotel I ever ran.
Why now
What turned that observation into a business wasn't a plan on paper — it was a phone call. My family in California's Central Valley grows almonds and had no existing route into Europe. That's a specific, real opportunity, not a hypothetical one, and it's the reason Baltic InCan Trade exists.
It also happens to sit at the center of three connections I already have:
How I work
Direct relationships
Every product I bring to market starts from a relationship I can call up directly — a grower, a supplier, a producer — not a broker three layers removed from the source.
Honest about scale
Baltic InCan Trade is a new company. Almonds are live and ready; other lines are in development. I'd rather tell you exactly where things stand than dress up a bigger story.
Hospitality instinct
Years of managing guest experience taught me that trust is built in the small, consistent details — documentation, communication, follow-through — not in a sales pitch.
Long-term view
The goal is a lasting trade route between these markets — starting with almonds, and growing as each relationship, on both the sourcing and buying side, proves itself out.
Get in touch
I'd rather have a direct conversation than a form letter — reach out and tell me what you're looking for.