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“The problem with the Canadian sources is, No. 1, there’s just not enough,” he said. “We always run into capacity issues with Canadian-sourced whey. There’s very little availability.”

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The tariffs are also hitting an ingredient whose price has already soared. The average U.S. price of WPC80 rose roughly 400 per cent to more than US$28,160 a tonne in August 2026 from about US$5,620 a tonne in August 2023, according to Vesper.

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Crosby remembers buying WPC80 for between US$1 and US$2 a pound before and around the pandemic, but some high-protein whey products are now costing his companies roughly US$11.50 to US$12 a pound.

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“You’ve got to think, ‘What’s that do to the consumer?’” he said. “It absolutely drives the price up.”

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As a result, Canadian manufacturers are trying to find their whey elsewhere, such as from Europe, New Zealand and other markets.

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European WPC80 averaged about US$31,290 a tonne in August, only about 11 per cent more than U.S. product before the Canadian tariff was added in, according to Vesper, making European supplies considerably cheaper now for Canadian buyers.

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“There are businesses in Canada that haven’t locked in their contracts for Q4. Even if they did, there’s too much unpredictability and uncertainty of what’s going to happen with the tariffs,” the dairy executive said. “If they run out of stock, they’re going to shut down production. That’s more expensive than anything.”

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But finding whey somewhere else and actually putting it into a Canadian product are two different things.

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Endlich said manufacturers may have to approve new suppliers and make new production arrangements before whey can be shipped across the Atlantic.

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“Those are all things that aren’t solved in a week’s time,” he said.

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Whey is produced as part of the cheese-making process, and Crosby said it can vary in taste and other characteristics from one manufacturing plant to another. Manufacturers switching suppliers have to test the new whey and may need to adjust the flavouring or other aspects of products consumers have been buying for years.

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As a result, Crosby said they can’t simply switch suppliers overnight.

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Manufacturers also cannot necessarily ask an overseas plant to reproduce exactly what a U.S. supplier had been making, he said.

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“If you have one of those bags of sports nutrition with the highest concentrated whey in there, you can’t swap that out,” he said.

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Some products could be reformulated while others could rise in price, although Endlich said it is too early to estimate the potential increase. Even alternatives are becoming more expensive: milk protein concentrate prices have roughly doubled over the past six months, he said.

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“Whey used to be a waste product 20 years ago,” he said. “Well, now, the tables have turned.”

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Plants also use different processes and may not be configured to produce precisely the same ingredient, with Crosby likening it to “going to Toyota and saying, ‘Go make a Silverado.’”

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The timing of the tariffs, however, could have been much worse, Endlich said, since sufficient replacement supply was not available from Europe and New Zealand six months ago. Now, European WPC80 has recently become more available as the global market has shifted.