A member creamery in the upper Midwest — small enough that "the export team" is one person who also runs the wash-up sink twice a week — sent its first pallet of aged cheddar overseas last week. She told us it took longer to get the paperwork right than it did to make the cheese.
That's a common story this spring. National dairy export figures for the first months of the year have come in strong, and a few of our smaller members are testing overseas orders for the first time, mostly because a distributor asked rather than because anyone went looking for it. It's a good problem to have, and also a genuinely confusing one if you've never filled out a certificate of origin before.
She'd been selling wholesale within a three-state radius for six years before this. The overseas order came through an existing distributor relationship, not a new one — the same buyer who'd been taking her cheddar domestically mentioned an overseas retail account was asking about small-batch American cheddar, and asked whether she'd be interested in trying a pallet. She said yes before she'd thought through what "yes" actually required.
What tripped her up
Nothing about the cheese itself. The wheels were fine — she'd been making the same cheddar for six years and could have shipped it blind. What slowed her down was the documentation: health certificates, country-specific labeling requirements that don't match domestic rules, and a customs broker relationship she had to build from nothing over the phone during a winter when nobody was traveling to meet anyone in person. She missed one shipping window because a form came back with the wrong net-weight unit on it, and the correction took longer than she expected.
She kept two lists taped above her desk through the whole process: one for "domestic label, don't touch" and one for "export version, check every time." Simple, but she says it's the only thing that kept her from mixing up a run partway through a production week. The net-weight correction alone cost her nearly three weeks — a form came back from the broker with the unit written the way she'd have written it for a domestic shipment, and by the time it was fixed and resubmitted, the vessel she'd been booked on had already sailed. She rebooked, and the pallet went out on the next available sailing instead.
What she'd tell a member trying this for the first time
Start the paperwork before you have a firm order, not after. A distributor who's excited about a new supplier will usually give you a little runway, but customs offices don't move on anyone's timeline but their own, and the lead time surprised her more than once. She also says it's worth finding one other member who's shipped internationally before and just asking them what broke the first time — she didn't know anyone to ask, and would have saved herself two weeks if she had.
If you're weighing a first export order this season, the Export Documentation Essentials course walks through the certificate and labeling requirements step by step, and it's a lot cheaper than a returned pallet. The Events Committee can also connect you with a member who's already been through a first shipment — ask, and we'll make the introduction.
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.