Greek feta producers fret over exports after US tariffs

By Angeliki Koutantou

KALAVRITA, Greece (Reuters) - A small cooperative of 1,200 stock breeders producing feta, Greece's trademark white soft cheese, in the southern Peloponnese peninsula had one big target this year: a market foray in the United States.

Back in 2019, the country managed to get feta exempted from U.S. tariffs imposed on European goods.

But President Donald Trump's move on Wednesday to slap a 10% tariff on most goods imported to the United States has cast a shadow on their plans. European Union, a close ally, was not spared, facing 20% reciprocal tariff rates.

 "What share of that (duties) will go to the final consumer... where the roulette ball will land, remains to be seen," said the general manager of the cooperative, Konstantinos Latsis, from inside the dairy's cold room housing 6,000 beech barrels where feta ripens in brine for at least two months.

The cooperative, one of the many producers of the salty sheep cheese supplies the Greek market with some 5,000 tonnes of barrel and tin-aged feta annually from its plant in Kalavrita.

Greece has been making feta, a protected EU trademark since 2022, for over 6,000 years.

It produced some 140,000 tonnes of feta last year worth 800 million euros. Some 8% of the exports reached the United States - the volume doubled in four years. 

Now, Greek dairies exporting feta to the fast-growing U.S. market anticipate that tariffs could at least halve those exports.

"I'm afraid feta will not find a way out of these tariffs this time," said Christos Apostolopoulos, head of Greece's association of dairy industries. "We have to figure it out, how to divert these quantities to other markets."

Despite the new U.S. duties, the Kalavrita cooperative still bets on its expansion overseas. "We are optimistic that, no matter what - because this is a very big market - we will be able to slowly enter it," Latsis said.

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)