CANBERRA: Administered by Wine Australia, the grant program has $1 million in funding for eligible small and medium wine businesses to claim up to 50% reimbursement for specific export promotion expenses incurred on or after 1 January 2018, up to the value of $25,000.
Eligible claims include reimbursement of travel expenses for a single promotional visit to these markets, the cost of providing free samples of the Australian wine product you’re promoting for export, participation in trade fairs and in-store promotions, as well as marketing and advertising. “Applications will be on a first-come first-served basis, so I strongly encourage wine businesses to review the guidelines and prepare their applications,” said Wine Australia chief executive officer Andreas Clark. “These grants focus on China and the USA as they have been identified as the markets with the most growth potential.” The Wine Export Grants program is part of the Australian Government’s $50 million Export and Regional Wine Support Package (the $50m Package), which aims to drive demand for wine exports and showcase Australia’s wine tourism to the world.
The $50m package aims to increase the value of Australian wine exports to a record $2.8 billion and attract an additional 40,000 international tourists to Australian wine regions by 2019/20.
Significant gains have already been made by the Australian wine industry in China, thanks to a Free Trade Agreement signed by the two countries in 2105 that will see tariffs on imports for both countries reduced to zero over a period of five years.
