Christmas is considered "make or break time" for many small businesses, none more so than St Tola Goat Cheese Farm in Inagh located south of the Burren in County Clare.
The family business, which is run by Siobhán Ní Ghairbhith, employs seven full-time employees.
There are extra part-time staff working during this busiest time of the year to produce the award-winning artisan cheese for distribution at home and abroad.
Now, the ongoing difficulties caused by the closure of Holyhead Port have led to delays in deliveries of up to three days for a product that has a short shelf life.
The port has been closed since it was damaged during Storm Darragh earlier this month.
Brian McEntee is Manager at the cheese making facility and says the delays are seriously impacting the company's UK Christmas market.
"It's made our cheese late arriving in the UK. It's our biggest week of the year," he said.
"The cheese has been ordered for restaurants, shops, everything for the Christmas week, and this is when it needs to be there.
"But now the cheese which is on menus in restaurants in the UK may well not be available now."
The St Tola cheese products normally leave the farm in Inagh on Wednesday mornings and are transported to Cork, where a refrigerated haulier takes the produce to Dublin. The cheeses arrive in Holyhead Friday and reach London on Mondays for distribution.
Last week, the cheese exports were three days late, arriving in London on Thursday.
"We were three days late arriving to London last week, and our product is perishable with a shelf life of six weeks," Mr McEntee said.
"So three days is actually quite a lot of time in that it takes three weeks to mature the cheese before it leaves here and has three weeks left to be sold.
"Once it reaches the UK, and once you take three days after."
He says the loss of sales to the cheese farm's sizeable UK customer base is of major concern.
"We go into our quietest months in January, February, and kind of rely on the increase in sales of Christmas to carry us through those much quieter months," Mr McEntee said.
"So the loss of these important sales at Christmas is a big concern now".
Earlier, the Taoiseach said the seriousness of the situation in Holyhead is becoming more apparent as the days go by, and it is "highly unlikely now that we will see Holyhead Port functioning in any real way this Christmas."
Simon Harris said this was a serious concern to both people who had bought goods and gifts that they were hoping would arrive and also people who are trying to get home for the Christmas period.
Meanwhile, Minister of State at the Department of Transport said he is planning for the possibility that the ferry terminals at Holyhead will not reopen at the end of this week.
James Lawless warned that some passengers or freight customers will not be accommodated on alternative crossings.
