China’s wine imports in the first 10 months showed no sign of recovery and continued to suffer double-digit drops, according to the latest official figures, dampening hopes of recovery for the year of 2019, as many fear the slump will continue into 2020.
With slowing economy – the worst in the past three decades – and ongoing US-China trade war, China’s wine industry took a hit in 2019.
The latest figures released by China Association for Imports and Exports of Wine & Spirits (CAWS) showed the country’s wine imports in the first 10 months of the year arrived at US$2 billion, a year-on-year drop of 17.3%, while its volume during the period dipped by 12.86% to 505.7 million litres.
With first 10 months’ figures clocking in, it’s unlikely that the overall imports for 2019 will pick up, though official figures won’t come in until early February usually.
Bottled wine imports including sparkling wine accounted for 94% of the country’s whole wine imports in value terms, and suffered a drop of 16.8% to US$1.88 billion during the period.
Demand for bulk wine also waned. Import volume dropped 15.8% to 114 million litres and value was down by 24.8% to 119 US$ million.
In terms of country of origins, Australia leads the pack with nearly US$600 wine imports, followed by France, Chile, Italy, Spain, the US, Argentina, Portugal, South Africa, Germany, New Zealand, Georgia and Moldova.
The country has roughly 4,000 bottled wine importers, down from last year’s 6000-strong members after over 2,000 went bust in the first five months of the year.
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