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.