CANBERRA: The Asian nation has overtaken the United States as the biggest buyer of Australian wine, increasing its imports by 51 per cent and paying $474 million for the product in the last year. Wine Australia attributed the result to the hard work put in by the industry, which it said was reflected in the jump in value of the Chinese market from just $27 million 10 years ago.
CEO Andreas Clark said the growth was exciting but exporters should be cautious. “Now it’s not always going to be at those high levels, clearly as the overall base increases the average rate of growth is going to drop off,” he said. “But everyone understands that and I think they’ve learnt the lesson that growth needs to be sustainable and needs to be the long term.
“And we need to be positioned correctly in the market at all price points.” Wine companies surprised by the ‘phenomenal social and economic boom’
Nick Waterman is the managing director of Yalumba wines in South Australia’s Barossa Valley. He said his company exported to China, but was surprised by the extent of the growth. “It’s come even a little bit ahead of where we predicted it would come.” Yalumba had pitched their business for China to be the biggest export market for the end of 2017. Mr Waterman said Yalumba had secured its export market by ensuring it relied on a distribution partner. “About a year ago we signed an agreement with company called ASC…they have 800 people in their team and about 14 officers across China.”
Neil Halliday, a 20-year veteran of marketing wine into China and manager of wine exports for Taylors wine, said he expected to retire before seeing growth figures of this calibre into China. “So having grown into a market, it is certainly reasonable to expect that we should retain our position,” he said. “But 51 percent growth rates [are] probably not that sustainable year on year.”
