If your import order has been sitting somewhere between a port and a warehouse for six weeks, you are not alone. Members have been telling us all fall that the container situation has gone from "annoying" to "the reason the tasting menu changed twice in September." This week we wanted to lay out plainly what is happening and what a small importer or buyer can actually do about it.
The short version: global shipping capacity has been strained since last year, and this fall it tightened further. Vessels are waiting outside ports longer than usual, and container availability has become uneven — plentiful in some places, scarce in others, because it is currently more profitable for carriers to reposition empty containers than to fill them with lower-margin agricultural cargo. For a wheel of alpine-style cheese crossing an ocean, that means longer transit windows and less certainty about which week it actually arrives. Federal officials have been in talks this month with port operators and major freight carriers about moving West Coast unloading into round-the-clock shifts, in an effort to clear the backlog faster.
What members in the import chain are seeing
A specialty importer who works with a handful of European producers told us her lead times have roughly doubled since spring, and that she has started building a buffer of four to six weeks into any order she cannot get by air. A retail buyer on the Membership & Outreach Committee said she has started quoting customers a range instead of a date for anything imported, which has actually gone over better than she expected — people seem to appreciate the honesty more than a broken promise.
On the domestic side, distributors are feeling a related but separate squeeze: packaging materials, particularly certain films and cartons, have been harder to source on short notice, which is pushing some producers toward substitute packaging mid-run. If you have had to swap a supplier for packaging this quarter, you are part of a pattern we are hearing about across regions, not an isolated problem with your account. A few members have also mentioned longer waits on replacement parts for aging-room equipment, for the same reason — freight capacity is simply tighter everywhere this season, not only on the ocean routes carrying imported wheels.
What to check before your next order
- Confirm your supplier's actual ship date, not just the order date. A confirmed booking with a carrier is a different thing from a confirmed sailing.
- Ask distributors about substitute packaging in writing, especially if your label copy or shelf-life claims depend on a specific format.
- Build slack into any holiday-season import plan now. If you are counting on a wheel landing in time for a November event, the math this year favors ordering earlier than you think you need to.
- Talk to your insurer or your contract terms about demurrage and detention fees if a container sits at port — several members have been surprised by these charges this fall.
None of this is a reason to panic about a curd shortage. Domestic production is healthy and most members are managing fine with earlier ordering and a little more flexibility with customers. But if you are planning holiday inventory around an import that has not shipped yet, this is the month to make a backup plan. The Membership & Outreach Committee is collecting notes on packaging substitutions members have found workable — email us if you have one worth sharing.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.