How much cash goes off shore when you buy imported CHEESE?
By Andrew Weinert |
We recently bought cheddar WITHOUT CHECKING THE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN -Oops
It’s just 1kg of cheese – it cost $8.00 – not much eh?
Let’s do the calculations.
Dairy Australia says the average milk price in Victoria – where most of Australia’s cheese is made was 48.2 cents per litre last year (2019) – there will have been higher and lower prices – depending on the season and location .
Note: prices were higher a couple of years ago https://www.dairyaustralia.com.au/industry/prices/farmgate-milk-price
It takes about 10 litres of milk to make 1000 grams of cheese containing 350 grams of fat (~35.0% as per the label) & 250 grams of protein (~25% protein in the cheese and another 7 to 8 grams in the whey) (all milk varies, but this is pretty right)
That means an Australian (Victorian) Farmer would get $4.82 for the milk this cheese was made from.
The processor would standardise the milk –
Make the 1 kg cheese and about 500 gram of Whey powder – the whey powder probably would be exported or used to make infant formula or other nutritional products.
Let’s assume its exported – the current world price in Aussie$ is about $1000 per Tonne or $1.00 per kg
1 kg cheddar cheese (product of NZ) , is advertised on-line is $8.00 per 1000 grams (1 kg)
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/search/products?searchTerm=Cheese%201%20kg
So
By buying this cheese (without checking the country of origin)
We have –
Deprived the Australian farmer of $4.81
And
Deprived the Australian processing economy (wages, packaging, fuel, transport etc of between $0.75 to $1.50 (depending on scale.
(Let’s say $1.00 as a very conservative figure)
Deprived the Australian processors of $0.50 export income (Note: making powder requires a lot of capital for dryers, tankers, staff etc)
There will be more – such as local marketers, artwork providers, etc.
So buying 1 kg of imported cheese deprives the Australian economy of
$4.81 to farmer
$1.00 to processor
$0.50 to processor for whey powder.
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$6.31 – NOT GOING TO THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY
That is a Lviv percentage when you buy cheese at $8 per kg.
The moral if the story BUY LOCAL – CHECK THE LABEL. IT IS IMPORTANT TO OUR ECONOMY.