diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 7183da22..d10012c5 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
 click>=8.1.7,<9.0.0
 datasets>=2.18.0,<3.0.0
-docling>=2.4.2,<3.0.0
+docling[tesserocr]>=2.4.2,<3.0.0
 GitPython>=3.1.42,<4.0.0
 httpx>=0.25.0,<1.0.0
 instructlab-schema>=0.4.0
diff --git a/src/instructlab/sdg/utils/chunkers.py b/src/instructlab/sdg/utils/chunkers.py
index 8946b8b7..50fd692c 100644
--- a/src/instructlab/sdg/utils/chunkers.py
+++ b/src/instructlab/sdg/utils/chunkers.py
@@ -12,16 +12,14 @@
 from datasets import Dataset
 from docling.datamodel.base_models import InputFormat
 from docling.datamodel.document import ConversionResult
-from docling.datamodel.pipeline_options import PdfPipelineOptions
-from docling.document_converter import (
-    ConversionStatus,
-    DocumentConverter,
-    PdfFormatOption,
+from docling.datamodel.pipeline_options import (
+    EasyOcrOptions,
+    OcrOptions,
+    PdfPipelineOptions,
+    TesseractOcrOptions,
 )
-from docling.pipeline.standard_pdf_pipeline import StandardPdfPipeline
 from langchain_text_splitters import Language, RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter
 from tabulate import tabulate
-from transformers import AutoTokenizer
 
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 _DEFAULT_CHUNK_OVERLAP = 100
@@ -35,6 +33,38 @@ def _num_chars_from_tokens(num_tokens) -> int:
     return int(num_tokens * 4)  # 1 token ~ 4 English character
 
 
+def resolve_ocr_options() -> OcrOptions:
+    # First, attempt to use tesserocr
+    try:
+        ocr_options = TesseractOcrOptions()
+        # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
+        # Third Party
+        from docling.models.tesseract_ocr_model import TesseractOcrModel
+
+        _ = TesseractOcrModel(True, ocr_options)
+        return ocr_options
+    except ImportError:
+        # No tesserocr, so try something else
+        pass
+    try:
+        ocr_options = EasyOcrOptions()
+        # Keep easyocr models on the CPU instead of GPU
+        ocr_options.use_gpu = False
+        # triggers torch loading, import lazily
+        # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
+        # Third Party
+        from docling.models.easyocr_model import EasyOcrModel
+
+        _ = EasyOcrModel(True, ocr_options)
+        return ocr_options
+    except ImportError:
+        # no easyocr either, so don't use any OCR
+        logger.error(
+            "Failed to load Tesseract and EasyOCR - disabling optical character recognition in PDF documents"
+        )
+        return None
+
+
 class FileTypes(Enum):
     MD = ".md"
     PDF = ".pdf"
@@ -208,13 +238,24 @@ def chunk_documents(self) -> List:
         Returns:
             List: a list of chunks from the documents
         """
+        # triggers torch loading, import lazily
+        # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
+        # Third Party
+        from docling.document_converter import DocumentConverter, PdfFormatOption
+        from docling.pipeline.standard_pdf_pipeline import StandardPdfPipeline
+
         if self.document_paths == []:
             return []
 
         model_artifacts_path = StandardPdfPipeline.download_models_hf()
-        pipeline_options = PdfPipelineOptions(artifacts_path=model_artifacts_path)
-        # Keep OCR models on the CPU instead of GPU
-        pipeline_options.ocr_options.use_gpu = False
+        pipeline_options = PdfPipelineOptions(
+            artifacts_path=model_artifacts_path,
+            do_ocr=False,
+        )
+        ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+        if ocr_options is not None:
+            pipeline_options.do_ocr = True
+            pipeline_options.ocr_options = ocr_options
         converter = DocumentConverter(
             format_options={
                 InputFormat.PDF: PdfFormatOption(pipeline_options=pipeline_options)
@@ -309,6 +350,11 @@ def create_tokenizer(self, model_name: str):
         Returns:
             AutoTokenizer: The tokenizer instance.
         """
+        # import lazily to not load transformers at top level
+        # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
+        # Third Party
+        from transformers import AutoTokenizer
+
         try:
             tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
             logger.info(f"Successfully loaded tokenizer from: {model_name}")
@@ -540,6 +586,11 @@ def export_documents(self, converted_docs: Iterable[ConversionResult]):
         Returns:
             Path: path to directory with docling json artifacts
         """
+        # triggers torch loading, import lazily
+        # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
+        # Third Party
+        from docling.document_converter import ConversionStatus
+
         docling_artifacts_path = self.output_dir / "docling-artifacts"
         docling_artifacts_path.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
 
diff --git a/tests/functional/conftest.py b/tests/functional/conftest.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..c1793a94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/functional/conftest.py
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+# Standard
+import pathlib
+import typing
+
+# Third Party
+import pytest
+
+TESTS_PATH = pathlib.Path(__file__).parent.parent.absolute()
+
+
+@pytest.fixture
+def testdata_path() -> typing.Generator[pathlib.Path, None, None]:
+    """Path to local test data directory"""
+    yield TESTS_PATH / "testdata"
diff --git a/tests/functional/test_imports.py b/tests/functional/test_imports.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..0b8b77fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/functional/test_imports.py
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
+
+# Standard
+import pathlib
+import subprocess
+import sys
+
+
+def test_sdg_imports(testdata_path: pathlib.Path):
+    script = testdata_path / "leanimports.py"
+    subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, str(script)], text=True)
diff --git a/tests/test_chunkers.py b/tests/test_chunkers.py
index 0d327982..a686fb75 100644
--- a/tests/test_chunkers.py
+++ b/tests/test_chunkers.py
@@ -2,9 +2,11 @@
 
 # Standard
 from pathlib import Path
+from unittest.mock import MagicMock, patch
 import tempfile
 
 # Third Party
+from docling.datamodel.pipeline_options import EasyOcrOptions, TesseractOcrOptions
 import pytest
 
 # First Party
@@ -13,6 +15,7 @@
     DocumentChunker,
     FileTypes,
     TextSplitChunker,
+    resolve_ocr_options,
 )
 
 # Local
@@ -86,3 +89,52 @@ def test_chunker_factory_empty_filetype(documents_dir):
                 output_dir=temp_dir,
                 tokenizer_model_name="instructlab/merlinite-7b-lab",
             )
+
+
+def test_resolve_ocr_options_is_not_none():
+    """
+    Test that resolve_ocr_options does not return None, which means it
+    found a valid OCR library on the machine running this test
+    """
+    ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+    assert ocr_options is not None
+
+
+@patch("docling.models.tesseract_ocr_model.TesseractOcrModel")
+def test_resolve_ocr_options_prefers_tessserocr(mock_tesseract):
+    """
+    Ensure resolve_ocr_options defaults to tesserocr if we're able
+    to load that library without error.
+    """
+    mock_tesseract.return_value = MagicMock()
+    ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+    assert isinstance(ocr_options, TesseractOcrOptions)
+
+
+@patch("docling.models.tesseract_ocr_model.TesseractOcrModel")
+def test_resolve_ocr_options_falls_back_to_easyocr(mock_tesseract):
+    """
+    Ensure resolve_ocr_options falls back to easyocr if we cannot
+    load tesserocr.
+    """
+    mock_tesseract.side_effect = ImportError("mock import error")
+    ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+    assert isinstance(ocr_options, EasyOcrOptions)
+
+
+@patch("docling.models.tesseract_ocr_model.TesseractOcrModel")
+@patch("docling.models.easyocr_model.EasyOcrModel")
+@patch("logging.Logger.error")
+def test_resolve_ocr_options_none_found_logs_error(
+    mock_logger, mock_easyocr, mock_tesseract
+):
+    """
+    If we cannot load tesserocr or easyocr, ensure
+    resolve_ocr_options logs an error so that users are aware optical
+    character recognition in PDFs will be disabled.
+    """
+    mock_tesseract.side_effect = ImportError("mock import error")
+    mock_easyocr.side_effect = ImportError("mock import error")
+    ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+    assert ocr_options is None
+    mock_logger.assert_called()
diff --git a/tests/testdata/leanimports.py b/tests/testdata/leanimports.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..f6a50484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/testdata/leanimports.py
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+"""Helper for test_sdg_imports"""
+
+# Standard
+import sys
+
+# block slow imports
+for unwanted in ["deepspeed", "llama_cpp", "torch", "transformers", "vllm"]:
+    # importlib raises ModuleNotFound when sys.modules value is None.
+    assert unwanted not in sys.modules
+    sys.modules[unwanted] = None  # type: ignore[assignment]
+
+# First Party
+# This will trigger errors if any of the import chain tries to load
+# the unwanted modules
+from instructlab.sdg.generate_data import generate_data