diff --git a/src/fondant/component/component.py b/src/fondant/component/component.py
index 9f23afbd..055beeb9 100644
--- a/src/fondant/component/component.py
+++ b/src/fondant/component/component.py
@@ -47,6 +47,9 @@ def __init__(self, **kwargs):
         super().__init__()
 
     def setup(self) -> t.Any:
+        # Don't assume every object is a string
+        # https://docs.dask.org/en/stable/changelog.html#v2023-7-1
+        dask.config.set({"dataframe.convert-string": False})
         # worker.daemon is set to false because creating a worker process in daemon
         # mode is not possible in our docker container setup.
         dask.config.set({"distributed.worker.daemon": False})
diff --git a/src/fondant/component/data_io.py b/src/fondant/component/data_io.py
index 285416af..76d5e7a2 100644
--- a/src/fondant/component/data_io.py
+++ b/src/fondant/component/data_io.py
@@ -3,7 +3,6 @@
 import typing as t
 from collections import defaultdict
 
-import dask
 import dask.dataframe as dd
 from dask.diagnostics import ProgressBar
 from dask.distributed import Client
@@ -31,10 +30,6 @@ def __init__(
         input_partition_rows: t.Optional[int] = None,
     ):
         super().__init__(manifest=manifest, operation_spec=operation_spec)
-        # Don't assume every object is a string
-        # https://docs.dask.org/en/stable/changelog.html#v2023-7-1
-        dask.config.set({"dataframe.convert-string": False})
-
         self.input_partition_rows = input_partition_rows
 
     def partition_loaded_dataframe(self, dataframe: dd.DataFrame) -> dd.DataFrame: