Chapman's Ice Cream Reduces U.S. Ingredients by 70% Amid Trade War

Chapman’s Ice Cream is pulling a sizeable share of its ingredient buying away from the United States as the Canada-U.S. trade dispute reshapes how a familiar Canadian brand thinks about suppliers.

The company says the shift is a direct response to the dispute and Trump administration tariffs. It is now on track to replace more than 70 per cent of its American ingredients with Canadian or non-U.S. sources by mid-2027, while keeping its own prices frozen through March 2028.

Tariffs push supplier rethink

Chapman’s began looking for alternatives to U.S. suppliers after the first Trump-administration tariffs were announced.

“We made a statement at that time that we weren’t raising prices and we were going to start this journey. And here we are. We have not been sitting idle. We have been working very hard,” Ashley Chapman told CBC’s London Morning.

The company has framed the move as both a business decision and a response to a broader political fight. In a social media post, Chapman said: “We stand with the Canadian government, and all provinces, in our outright rejection of these unjustified tariffs.”

The result is a supplier-by-supplier overhaul. Chapman has described the work as starting with a list and moving through it piece by piece, with the company “on track for a 70 per cent reduction in what we get from the United States.”

Canadian cones, global ingredients

Some of the replacement sourcing is coming from far beyond Canada. Chapman’s is sourcing almonds from Australia and cherries from Chile as part of the shift away from American suppliers.

Other changes are much closer to home. The company has signed a five-year deal with Original Foods in Ontario to produce Canadian-made sugar cones. That agreement includes a new cone oven and creates a Canadian industrial sugar-cone supply.

For Chapman, the cone deal appears to be one of the clearest examples of the company trying to bring a component of its supply chain into Canada rather than simply moving it from one foreign supplier to another.

“We’ve gotten into a relationship with a company named Original Foods,” Chapman said. “We signed a five-year contract with them.”

The company says it will continue using 100 per cent Canadian dairy in its ice cream, even as it changes other ingredients and components.

Cost surprises in new sourcing

A shift away from U.S. suppliers might sound like a recipe for higher costs. Chapman’s says that has not always been the case.

Chapman said some replacement sourcing, including Australian almonds, is cost-neutral or cheaper than U.S. supply even after shipping.

“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.”

He also told the London Free Press the change has altered how the company views its old purchasing habits.

“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,” Chapman said.

Prices frozen through March 2028

Alongside the sourcing changes, Chapman’s says it will freeze its prices through March 2028.

That commitment is central to how the company is presenting the move: a push to reduce U.S. exposure without asking customers to absorb the cost of the transition through company price increases.

Chapman has said the company wants stable, reliable trading relationships.

“That’s what we want for our business. We want able trading partners that are not emotional, and whenever there’s a dispute, we can just sit down and have an adult conversation and get to the end,” he said.

The supplier shift is not yet complete. But by mid-2027, Chapman’s says more than 70 per cent of its American ingredients will have been replaced by Canadian or non-U.S. sources.

For a company built around a product as familiar as ice cream, the change is unusually geopolitical. Almonds, cherries and sugar cones have become part of a wider response to tariffs, trade friction and the question of how much Canadian manufacturers want to rely on American supply.

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