In the first half of 2020, Switzerland’s cheese imports increased sharply and outstripped exports in terms of volume. Switzerland Cheese Marketing attributes this to the corona crisis.
In the first six months, the country’s cheese exports increased by 2% to 34,593 tons. This was 686 tons more than in the same period last year. Overall, imports rose by 15.4% (+4,890 tons) to 36,704 tons.
Switzerland Cheese Marketing (SCM) commented: “Due to the border closures, shopping tourism was stopped, which meant that, in addition to the food industry, many very price-sensitive Swiss shopping tourists now also had to shop in Switzerland … Cheap cheese, which was previously very likely to have been purchased in a foreign country close to the border, can therefore currently be found in the import statistics”. This assumption is supported by the average import price. This fell from CHF6.85 /kg in 2019 to currently CHF6.29/kg.
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