
In 2020, global cheese imports amounted to usd 32.8 billion in monetary terms. Compared to 2016, when cheese imports were estimated at $27 billion, cheese imports by all importing countries increased by 21.4%.
Compared to 2019, the volume of world cheese imports in 2020 decreased by 0.5%.
The top five importers of cheese in 2020 were European countries - Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Belgium. Together, these countries purchased 37.8% of all imported cheese during 2020.
If we consider purchases by continent, suppliers from European countries purchased the largest amount of imported cheese during 2020 - $ 22.8 billion, or 69.8% of the global volume. Asian importers came in second with 16.9%, while 6.3% of imported cheeses worldwide were shipped to North America.
A smaller percentage was sold to Latin America (3.3%), excluding Mexico but including the Caribbean, Africa (1.95%) and Oceania (1.88%) led by Australia.
Top 15 cheese importing countries in 2020:
Germany: $4.5 billion (13.9% of total imported cheese) United Kingdom: $2.2 billion (6.8%) Italy: $2.1 billion (6.5%) France: 1. $9 billion (6%) Belgium: $1.6 billion (4.8%) Netherlands: $1.5 billion (4.6%) US: $1.4 billion (4.2%) Japan: 1. $33 billion (4.1%) Spain: $1.25 billion (3.9%) Russia: $1.1 billion (3.5%) Sweden: $675.4 million (2.1%) Saudi Arabia : $660.5M (2.1%) Austria: $595.4M (1.9%) South Korea: $555.1M (1.7%) China: $522M (1.6%)Among the above countries, the fastest growing cheese markets since 2019 were: SOUTH KOREA (growth by 13.3%), CHINA (growth by 13.1%), France (growth by 7.5%) and RUSSIA (growth by 7.3 %). %).
Among the countries that saw a decrease in import cheese purchases were the usa (-9.5%), Italy (-9%), the Netherlands (-5.2%) and Spain (-5.1%).
In value terms, these 15 countries purchased 66.8% of all cheeses imported in 2020.
Ukraine is on the 43rd place in the world list of cheese importers with an impressive annual import growth of 93.4%:
PioneerProduct based on worldstopexports.com