Aged Gouda from Holland, Parmesan-Reggiano from Italy, Harzer from Germany and Manchego from Spain are just some of the international cheeses on display in a cheese counter in Sale, about 200 kilometres east of Melbourne.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 35 seconds 4 m 35 s A deli owner, cheese factory director and Dairy Australia talk about the amount of cheese Australia imports ( Laura Poole ) Download 3.2 MB

Even in regional Victoria, locals have exotic taste in cheese. And so does the rest of Australia.

In the past year, Australia imported 20,000 more tonnes of cheese than it did 10 years ago. While a lot of the cheese Australia imports is for the lower end of the market, boutique cheesemakers say the levels of imports in their field make it hard to compete.

Dairy Australia industry analyst John Droppert says Australia both imports and exports cheese

"Overall, we produce about 311,000 tonnes of cheese in Australia ever year, so it's a relatively small proportion of what we produce," he said.

"Obviously we export a lot of cheese as well. There's an inflow and an outflow going on at the same time, rather than trying to plug a gap in the Australian market."

Last financial year, the country imported 82,396 tonnes of cheese, with the largest percentage coming from New Zealand.

Mr Droppert said imported boutique cheeses made up a small amount of the imported cheese in terms of quantity, but were significant in terms of value.

"We've got the bottom end of the market to fill, which is usually where some of the processing cheeses from the US, and some of the block cheese, the standard cheddars from New Zealand, come in and fit that end of the market," he said.

Local cheese factory says level of imports 'unfair'

For boutique cheesemakers, targeting the high-end retail markets, imports add to the competition.

Tarago River Cheese, at Neerim South, about 100 kilometres east of Melbourne, has been making cheese for 33 years, using milk from the company's own dairy farm.

Director David Johnson said the factory produced about 200 tonnes of cheese a year.

"We do compete on a world scale. We very much compete against imports, which are often favoured over Australian speciality cheese," he said.

"I think in the 30 or 40-year history of speciality cheese in Australia, we've developed some very good products out there. Often we have to fight pretty hard for our little bit of shelf space against the imported cheeses and the big multinational companies that generally produce that sort of cheese now."

Australia is a newcomer in the world cheese market, competing with hundreds of years of European cheesemaking history.

Mr Johnson said there were lessons to learn from the Australian wine industry in terms of marketing produce locally.

"It's probably one of the last areas that's still dominated by imports," he said.

"I would say that 70 per cent of the cheese offered for sale is imported cheese, and about 30 per cent Australian. It's taking a long while. We're probably well behind the wine industry in developing the promotion for Australian speciality cheese."

At the Europa Deli on Raymond Street in Sale, Filomena Padula said the customers dictated the ratio of imported to Australian cheeses.

"We have a lot of local cheese, Australian cheese, but we also have a lot of imported cheeses," she said.

"I think two-thirds of the cheeses we sell are imported.

"Because of travel and other reasons, people are really experimenting with cheese and happy to try different cheese from other parts of the world."