U.S. dairy product exports hard to contain

Dairy Exporter Blog puts some of the export challenges posed by U.S. port congestion into context. July 2021 total outbound shipments of all products through the major California ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland were lower than any point in the past year, and the quantity of full containers shipped out of California ports was the lowest in over a decade. Container companies opted to transport empty containers back to Asia to shorten turnaround times rather than pick up U.S. agricultural products – unless exporters were willing to pay extravagant prices and extra fees, as well as deal with short and rapidly moving return windows to get U.S. dairy products on a ship. An estimated 70% of shipping containers were empty in July, an all-time record. With that as a backdrop, here’s a summary of dairy product export numbers in July: Volume basis: Compared to July 2020, year-over-year growth in volume on a milk solids equivalent basis was about 7%, the sixth straight month ...