YS
YS Group International

Four companies.
Three countries.
One standard of execution.

YS Group International is the overseas arm of the YS Group — a privately held house operating across film distribution, real-estate investment and the international cotton trade, from Canada and the United States into Pakistan and the wider world.

The Companies
4
Operating Companies
3
Countries
3
Sectors
7
Cotton Origins
What We Do

Three businesses, held to one discipline

Film, property and fibre look nothing alike from the outside. Underneath, each is the same business: buy well, deliver exactly what was promised, and be the counterparty people come back to.

Distribution

Acquiring theatrical rights and releasing Pakistani and world cinema across Canada — from print delivery and classification through to box-office settlement.

Investment

Acquiring, entitling and redeveloping real estate in North America with our own capital, long holding periods and no outside fund mandate to satisfy.

Representation

Standing for the world's leading cotton merchants in North America and placing their growths with Pakistan's spinning industry, bale by bale, contract by contract.

The Companies

Four incorporated businesses, each with its own desk

Every company is separately incorporated, separately capitalised and separately run — sharing only the standard they are held to and the relationships behind them.

The Long Way Round

A family business that went abroad

The group began in Pakistan and grew outward — first into the trade routes that supplied it, then into the markets its people had moved to. The international companies exist because the relationships came first and the borders came second.

Where We Operate

Close to the counterparty, in every direction

Our companies sit deliberately at both ends of the trade — in the markets where the goods and the capital originate, and in the market where they land.

Canada
Toronto

Corporate base for YS Films and YS Investments, and the contracting desk for YS Services Canada Inc.

United States
Rhode Island

Registered base of YS Services USA Inc., alongside merchant relationships across the American cotton belt.

Pakistan
Lahore

Where the group began — mill relationships, producer relationships and the market intelligence that informs both.

Start with a conversation

Whether you are a producer, a seller, a merchant or a mill — tell us which desk you need and we will put the right person on it.

YS Films · Canada

Pakistani cinema,
on Canadian screens

YS Films acquires and distributes Pakistani feature films and world content across Canada — from opening weekend in the Greater Toronto Area to nationwide circuits, and on into the home-entertainment window.

What We Acquire
2.5M+
South Asian Canadians
8
Core Release Markets
10
Provinces Covered
4
Release Languages

Population figure: Canadians reporting South Asian origin, Statistics Canada 2021 Census.

What We Do

A full theatrical release, run by one accountable desk

Distribution is a chain of unglamorous jobs that all have to land on the same Friday. We do every one of them ourselves rather than sub-contracting the parts that decide whether a film opens well.

Acquisition & Rights

Territory-wide Canadian rights negotiated directly with producers and sales agents — theatrical, home entertainment and, where offered, downstream digital.

Theatrical Release

Screen counts, showtime patterns and date positioning negotiated circuit by circuit, with holdover strategy reviewed against actuals every week of the run.

Delivery & Technical

DCP mastering and QC, KDM issuance per screen and per engagement, subtitle conform, trailer and content-advisory packages.

Classification & Compliance

Provincial classification, distributor registration and advertising approvals handled ahead of the release date, not on the week of it.

Marketing & P&A

Diaspora-first campaigns: community radio and press, in-cinema, paid social by postal-code cluster, talent appearances and premiere nights.

Reporting & Settlement

Per-screen grosses reported through the run, reconciled against exhibitor statements, and remitted to rights holders on a stated schedule.

What We Acquire

The films our audience actually turns out for

We buy for a specific, well-understood Canadian audience — and we are honest with producers about which of their films that audience will fill a room for.

01

Urdu Features

Mainstream Pakistani theatrical releases — the core of the slate, positioned for Eid, holiday and event weekends.

02

Punjabi & Regional

Punjabi, Pashto and Sindhi-language pictures with a defined regional audience in specific Canadian metros.

03

World Cinema

Non-Pakistani international content — South Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish titles seeking a Canadian theatrical home.

04

Documentary

Feature documentary with festival provenance or a subject the community is already talking about.

05

Festival & Event

One-night engagements, premieres with talent, and curated programmes built around a theme or an anniversary.

06

Re-releases

Restored classics and catalogue titles returned to the big screen for audiences who never saw them there.

Opening Weekend

A full house, four thousand miles from home

There is a particular sound a Canadian auditorium makes when a Lahore skyline comes up on screen. That reaction is the whole business — and it is why we treat a release date as a promise to two audiences at once.

Release Windows

Three windows, sequenced deliberately

Every title gets a plan for its whole life in the territory, not just its opening Friday.

Window One

Theatrical

Exclusive cinema run across national and independent circuits, sized to the title and extended on performance rather than optimism.

Window Two

Home Entertainment

Transactional digital and physical release in the Canadian market once the theatrical run has done its work.

Window Three

Broadcast & Streaming

Licensing to Canadian broadcast and subscription platforms, negotiated title by title with rights holders kept in the loop.

Where We Release

Eight markets that carry a Canadian release

Screen allocation follows the audience, not the map. These are the metros where a Pakistani title opens wide first, before it widens out.

Toronto & GTA

Mississauga, Brampton, Scarborough, Markham

Vancouver

Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond & the Lower Mainland

Calgary

Northeast and southeast corridors

Edmonton

Mill Woods and the west end

Ottawa

The capital region, including Gatineau

Montréal

West Island and off-island circuits

Winnipeg

A small market that consistently over-indexes

Halifax

Atlantic Canada's student and professional base

For producers and sales agents

If you are holding Canadian rights, here is what working with us looks like in practice — and what we will tell you before you sign anything.

  • A real release plan, in writing. Target date, circuit strategy, opening screen count and P&A budget, agreed before the deal closes.
  • Transparent settlement. Exhibitor statements reconciled per screen and shared with the rights holder, not summarised into a single number.
  • Technical handled here. Send us the master; DCP, KDMs, subtitles and classification are our problem, on our timeline.
  • An honest read. If we think a title will not open in Canada, we say so rather than take it and under-release it.
  • One point of contact. The person who acquires the film runs the release and answers the phone during it.

Have a film for Canada?

Send us the title, the language, the delivery status and the window you are looking at. We will come back with a view — and if it is a fit, a plan.

YS Investments · Real Estate

Property acquired with patience,
developed with intent

YS Investments buys income-producing and underutilised real estate in North America and improves it — repositioning what is already standing, and building what should be. Our own capital, our own timeline, no fund clock.

Our Strategy
4
Asset Classes
10+
Year Hold Horizon
100%
Own Capital
0
Blind Pools
Strategy

Buy the problem, not the pro-forma

The assets we want are the ones a spreadsheet undersells: mismanaged, under-leased, over-deferred, or simply held too long by an owner who ran out of interest. Value comes from fixing something real, not from assuming a lower exit cap rate.

Acquire

Off-market and lightly marketed opportunities sourced through brokers, lenders and owners directly — including estate situations, land assembly and partial-interest buyouts.

Reposition

Entitlements pursued, capital plans executed, units and suites brought back to market standard, and operations taken in hand from day one of ownership.

Hold

Stabilised assets are financed conservatively and kept. We sell when an asset has genuinely finished its job — not because a fund term expired.

Asset Classes

Where we are willing to put capital

We stay inside what we can operate. Four categories, all of them things we can walk, inspect and personally underwrite.

01

Multi-Residential

Purpose-built rental and mid-rise apartment assets with achievable rent-to-market gaps and capex that actually pencils.

02

Mixed-Use & Retail

Main-street and podium retail with residential or office above, where a leasing problem is mistaken for a location problem.

03

Industrial & Flex

Small-bay industrial, warehousing and flex space in supply-constrained submarkets with legacy below-market leases.

04

Land & Entitlement

Infill sites and assemblies carried through zoning, site plan and permit — sold shovel-ready or built ourselves.

From Closing To Occupancy

The value is created after the deal closes

Anyone can buy a building. The return comes from the eighteen months that follow — permits pulled, trades managed, units turned, tenants replaced and a rent roll rebuilt line by line.

Process

Five stages, and we do not skip one

I

Source

Direct and off-market origination through owners, brokers, lenders and trades who know what we buy.

II

Underwrite

In-place cash flow first. Capex costed with real contractor pricing, not per-square-foot assumptions.

III

Acquire

Diligence on title, environmental, structure and leases, financed with leverage we can service through a downturn.

IV

Execute

Entitlement, permitting and construction managed in-house with a fixed scope and a monitored schedule.

V

Stabilise

Lease-up, refinance onto long-term debt, and hold — with a defined reserve for the next capital cycle.

How we underwrite

We are conservative in the places that break sponsors and aggressive only where we control the outcome.

  • Going-in yield discipline. The deal has to work on today's rents and today's rates, before a single dollar of upside.
  • Leverage we can carry. Sized to debt service under stress, with rate exposure hedged or fixed rather than hoped away.
  • Real capex numbers. Scopes priced by the trades who will do the work, with contingency held separately from the budget.
  • A structural reserve. Roof, envelope, mechanical and parking are funded on a schedule, not deferred into the next owner's problem.
  • Exit optionality. Every asset must work as a hold, a refinance and a sale — if it only works one way, we pass.
Who We Work With

The people who bring us the good ones

Commercial brokerages
Private owners & estates
Lenders & special servicers
Receivers & trustees
Land assemblers
Municipal planners
Architects & planners
General contractors
Property managers

Have something worth looking at?

Send the address, the rent roll and the asking price. If it fits, you will hear back quickly — and if it does not, you will hear that quickly too.

YS Services USA Inc. · Cotton

American fibre,
delivered to Pakistan's mills

YS Services USA Inc. represents international cotton merchants in the United States and places their growths with Pakistan's spinning industry — structuring the contract, managing the shipment and standing behind every bale we sell.

US Growths
5
US Growth Regions
15+
Merchant Principals
20+
Mill Counterparties
4
Loading Ports
What We Do

An indenting desk, not a broker's phone line

We represent the seller and serve the buyer. That means being accountable for the whole life of a contract — the price it was struck at, the quality that ships against it, and the documents that follow it into the bank.

Representation & Indenting

Acting for international merchants and US shippers, we structure and place orders across every American growing region and grade.

Price Structuring

Fixed-price, on-call and basis-on-call contracts built around ICE No. 2 futures, with fixation windows and roll strategy agreed up front.

Shipment & Settlement

Booking, documentation, letters of credit, sight and usance terms, and claim handling from gin yard to mill gate.

US Growths

Five growing regions, matched to the count

American cotton is not one product. Each region has its own staple, strength and micronaire profile — and a mill's ring-spun 30s does not want the same bale as its open-end 10s.

🇺🇸

West Texas & High Plains

The volume engine of the US crop — stripper-harvested Upland in depth, priced to move.

🇺🇸

Mid-South & Delta

Memphis territory growths: longer staple, stronger fibre, the traditional benchmark for quality Upland.

🇺🇸

Southeast

Georgia and the Carolinas — consistent mid-staple picker cotton with reliable colour grades.

🇺🇸

San Joaquin Valley

California Pima and Acala — extra-long staple for fine counts and premium compact yarns.

🇺🇸

Desert Southwest

Arizona and New Mexico Pima, with the length and strength that combed ring-spun programmes demand.

Loading Ports

Houston, Savannah, Charleston and Long Beach — routed to the fastest available window for Karachi and Port Qasim.

📋

USDA Classing

Every bale classed by the USDA-AMS with full HVI data available before the contract is signed.

🏭

Destination

Delivered into Pakistan's spinning belt — Faisalabad, Multan, Karachi, Lahore and Sheikhupura.

Gin Yard To Mill Gate

Every contract ends the same way

A truck backs into a receiving bay in Faisalabad and the bales come off exactly as they were described in Memphis eleven weeks earlier. Everything we do between those two moments exists to make that unremarkable.

MICLENSTRUNFRD

Quality is a number before it is an opinion

Every US bale carries a USDA classification. We trade on that data, share it in full, and match it against what the mill's spinning plan actually needs.

  • Staple length & uniformity. Matched to the count and the spinning system — ring, compact, rotor or air-jet.
  • Micronaire. Kept inside the premium range for dye uptake and neps, with discounts explicit rather than absorbed quietly.
  • Strength & elongation. Underwritten for the yarn strength the mill has to hit at its target twist.
  • Colour grade & leaf. Rd and +b read against the end-use, because a white yarn programme forgives nothing.
  • Contamination. Bale integrity, module handling and warehouse conditions checked before shipment, not after a claim.
Contract Mechanics

The terms we work in every day

Nothing here is exotic. It is simply the machinery of the trade, run properly.

ICE No. 2 futures
On-call purchase & sale
Basis-on-call
Fixed-price contracts
CIF & CFR terms
FOB warehouse
Letters of credit
Sight & usance
Documents against payment
ICA Bylaws & Rules
Arbitration & claims
Weight & quality tolerance
Our Principals

We stand for the world's leading merchants

YS Services acts on behalf of an exceptional roster of international merchants, producers and shippers — giving our mill partners access to every major growing origin through one desk.

Olam International
ECOM Agroindustrial
Paul Reinhart AG
J.G. Boswell Company
Toyoshima & Co.
Omni Cotton
Australian Food & Fibre
Cargill Cotton
Bunge
COFCO International
ADM Cotton
Vequis

Open a position with the US desk

Whether you are a mill looking for reliable American supply or a merchant looking for representation into Pakistan, tell us what you need covered.

YS Services Canada Inc. · Cotton

Every other origin,
contracted from Canada

YS Services Canada Inc. is the Canadian arm of the same cotton representation business — the same merchant principals, the same Pakistani mills, with contracting, correspondence and settlement handled through Canada, and coverage across every growing origin outside the United States.

Origins We Cover
7
Growing Origins
15+
Merchant Principals
2
Settlement Currencies
12
Time Zones Bridged
What We Do

One desk, every origin outside America

Where the US entity covers American growths, the Canadian company carries everything else — Brazilian, Australian, African, Egyptian and Central Asian fibre — and provides the contracting jurisdiction our counterparties increasingly ask for.

Multi-Origin Representation

Acting for merchants across Brazil, Australia, West and Central Africa, Egypt, Greece, Türkiye and the CIS — placing their growths into Pakistan's spinning belt.

Contracting & Settlement

A Canadian contracting entity with CAD and USD settlement, established banking correspondence and a neutral, predictable legal footing.

Logistics Coordination

Vessel booking, transhipment routing and documentation managed across time zones that span from Mato Grosso to Multan.

Origins

Seven growing origins, one accountable desk

Through our principals we source across the world's premier cotton-producing regions, matching every count and grade to the right mill and the right delivery window.

🇧🇷

Brazil

Mato Grosso and Bahia growths — consistent mid-to-long staple in serious volume.

🇦🇺

Australia

Namoi and Darling Downs — high-grade, machine-picked and effectively contamination-free.

🇪🇬

Egypt

Extra-long staple Giza cotton for the finest combed and compact yarn counts.

🌍

West & Central Africa

Franc-zone hand-picked cotton from Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire and Benin.

🇺🇿

Central Asia

Uzbek, Turkmen and regional CIS fibre, moving overland and through Black Sea ports.

🇬🇷

Greece & Türkiye

Mediterranean growths with short lead times into the Arabian Sea corridor.

🇮🇳

India

Shankar-6 and regional growths where policy windows and parity make them workable.

🇺🇸

United States

Covered by our sister company, YS Services USA Inc. — one relationship, both desks.

Five Continents, One Bay

The world's cotton, pointed at one coastline

Fibre grown in Mato Grosso, the Namoi Valley, the Nile Delta and the Fergana Valley ends up on the same wharf in Karachi. Coordinating that convergence — reliably, contract after contract — is the job.

Why the business runs a Canadian entity

It is not a formality. A Canadian counterparty solves specific, practical problems for merchants and mills on both sides of the contract.

  • Predictable jurisdiction. Canadian incorporation and contract law, with ICA rules and arbitration where the trade expects them.
  • Banking that clears. Established CAD and USD correspondence, so letters of credit and remittances move without surprises.
  • Time-zone bridge. A North American desk that overlaps both the origin's morning and the mill's evening — same day, not next day.
  • Group alignment. Shares a corporate base with YS Films and YS Investments, and a common standard of governance and record-keeping.
  • One relationship, two desks. American growths route through YS Services USA Inc.; everything else runs here — with the same people behind both.
Service Detail

What the desk actually handles

Order placement
Enquiry taken from the mill, matched against principals' available stock and forward positions, and confirmed with a firm offer inside the trading day.
Contract issue
Sales contracts drawn under ICA Bylaws and Rules, with grade, staple, micronaire, tolerance, shipment period and arbitration clause stated explicitly.
Price fixation
On-call and basis-on-call positions monitored against ICE No. 2, with fixation instructions confirmed in writing and roll dates flagged in advance.
Documentation
Invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin, weight and quality certificates and phytosanitary paperwork assembled and checked before presentation.
Shipment tracking
Booking confirmed, container stuffing verified, sailing and transhipment monitored, and the mill kept informed of any change to the arrival window.
Claims & arbitration
Weight and quality disputes raised through the proper channel and pursued to conclusion — with the merchant and the mill both kept honest.

Open a position with the Canadian desk

Tell us the origin, the grade, the volume and the shipment period. We will come back with what is available and what it will cost.

Contact

Tell us what you're
working on

One form, four desks. Choose the company your enquiry belongs to and it will reach the person who runs it — not a shared inbox.

By sending this form you consent to us storing and using these details to respond to your enquiry. We do not share them and we do not add you to a mailing list.

Before You Write

What helps us answer faster

If you are bringing a film

Title, language, running time, year, rights status for Canada, delivery status (DCP, subtitles, trailer), whether the film has released anywhere else, and the release window you have in mind.

If you are bringing a property

Address, asset type, unit or square-foot count, in-place rent roll, year built, known capital items, financing in place, and the price expectation.

If you are a mill

Origin and growth preferred, grade and staple, micronaire range, monthly requirement, shipment period, and the payment terms you work on.

If you are a merchant

Origins you ship, available positions, the counterparties you already cover in Pakistan, and what you would want a representative desk to take on.