China's wine import from Australia is seen to increase with the signing of the FTA between the two countries, industry experts said. (Photo : www.dw.com)
A sharp increase in China's wine imports is expected this year following the signing of a free trade agreement with Australia on June 17, which will reduce to zero within five years the tariffs on Australian wine exports to China, the Guangzhou Daily reported.
Latest statistics showed that for the first two months of this year, imports of wine grew 23.7 percent year-on-year to 79.31 million liters.
Industry experts said that the strong demand for wines has contributed to the significant sales growth, and the market has experienced sharp declines in imported wine inventories as many second- and third-tier importers are entering the market, which further enhanced competition.
The report said that China's economic slowdown has affected the sales of high-end wine brands over the past two years, and some distributors have to deal with financial issues caused by mounting inventories. This has caused the prices of many high-end wines to drop to lower than 100 yuan ($16) per bottle.
But according to the report, there have been recent signs of a rebound of high-end wine sales in the market. The Castel Group of France in China has launched two new types of high-end wine priced at 300-600 yuan ($50-$100) and 100-300 yuan ($16-$50), respectively.
Further, the Conseil Interprofessionel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB), an association of Bordeaux wine professionals, compiled in its 2015 fine wine list the prices of imported products and the adjustments made from the original 100-400 yuan ($16-$65) range to the 100-500 yuan ($16-$80) range. This indicated Chinese consumers' growing interest in high-end wines.
The Wine Economics Research Center of the School of Economics at the University of Adelaide has estimated that China's net imports of red wine could increase to 790 million liters by 2018.
