China’s top 10 biggest wine importers
17th November, 2015
by
Patrick Schmitt
The latest figures on wine sales in China show a market back in growth. We look at the performance of the top 10 importers by country.
Bottles of Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais arrive in China
As previously reported by the drinks business, the market for wine in China appears to be experiencing a bounce back, with almost a 50% year-on-year volume increase and 30% value increase, according to official Chinese customs data covering the period from January to September this year.
While sales of imported wine never actually suffered negative growth in China, the rate of increase slowed from 65% in 2011 to just 3% during 2014, following the introduction of austerity measures by president Xi Jingping in 2013.
The main impact of this new political climate has been felt by French fine wine, but more notably in volume terms, domestically produced wine, which has fallen by 16% in the last two years from a peak of 142m cases in 2012 to 119m at the end of 2014.
Nevertheless, imported wine sales are growing faster in volume than value, with almost all imported wine country categories seeing a decline in their average prices, and it is bulk wine that is experiencing the greatest growth, up 100% from January to September compared to the same period in 2014.
Consequently, bulk wine now totals 98 million litres, one third of the 298m litre total imported wine market in China (which in turn is 28% of the domestic wine market, which amounts to 1,071m litres).
The top 10 by volume can be viewed over the following pages.