As the Trump administration continues to escalate the trade war with Canada, Chapman's Ice Cream has started taking its business elsewhere.
The company has been working to de-couple from the U.S. ever since the first round of tariffs were announced in early 2025.
CEO Ashley Chapman said now that they've done the ground work to get some of their highest volume items sourced from other countries, they'll be taking a huge chunk of their business out of the U.S. by the middle of 2027.
"Things like cherries, almonds, pecans, cones, wafers for sandwiches: just a ton of stuff where there's these huge industries that really pump out a lot down there," he said. "We just started with a list and we've been knocking off bits and pieces ever since... so we are on track for a 70 per cent reduction in what we get from the United States."
He said the goal is to eventually reach 100 per cent, but that may take an additional year.
In terms of where these ingredients will come from, Chapman, said they will get almonds from Australia, cherries from Chile, but sugar cones will come from right down the road.
"We've gotten into a relationship with a company just outside of Hamilton named Original Foods," said Chapman. "We signed a five-year contract with them. That is one particular area where there is nobody else in Canada making sugar cones. We've reshored a huge component to Canada and it's literally right around the corner."
A massive cone oven was brought in from Germany so Original Foods could begin production.
As for their international suppliers, Chapman said he was shocked that they managed to keep our component costs the same.
"We're getting almonds from Australia, truly on the other side of the world, and we're getting them for an excellent price because we have great volumes," he said. "You factor in the shipping cost and it's either neutral or slightly better. It's making me start to believe that perhaps we had been paying too much for many years for some of the products we had been getting from the United States."
As the company navigates new deals in response to the trade war, it also reaffirmed its commitment to customers: halting price increases from now until at least March 2028.
