Australian wine is back. On March 28, the Ministry of Commerce issued a review ruling that the "double reverse" of wine imported from Australia was no longer necessary. Anti-dumping duties that have been in place for three years have also been abolished ahead of schedule.

"You'll soon find out how much wine is imported into Australia!" Wang Yuan, export director of Australia QVS Group, who came to the exhibition, told the 21st Century Business Herald.

Customs data show that in the January-March period, wine imports were close to 60 million liters, up 3.6 percent from the same period last year, and imports were $250 million, down 11 percent from the same period last year. Among them, the import volume and import value of Australian wine rose by more than 400% and nearly 600% respectively, which ended the decline of the entire wine import volume since last year.

Seven years ago, for the first time, wine imports exceeded the output of China's regulated wine producers. In terms of import value, Australian wine accounted for 38.2% of the imported wine market in the first half of 2020. Now, Australian wine is returning to the Chinese market, and domestic wine will meet again.

"Australian wine is forcing a change in the wine industry and reallocating the market share of imported wine from different countries." Wang Yuan said, but in the low-end wine price, there will be no big adjustment after the return of Australian original wine to China, because the existing inventory is too large.

He said that before the tariff increase, the market price of South Australia's raw wine was 1.4-1.6 Australian dollars/liter, and after the implementation of anti-dumping, the price fell to 0.2 Australian dollars/liter in 2022, greatly below the cost price of 0.8-1 Australian dollars/liter. Many Australian companies have had to pull out grape seedlings or pull low-end wine back for distillation. By March this year, the price of South Australian raw wine had recovered to $0.50 / litre, but it was still upside down.

"Don't say foreign wine has hit the Chinese market. Without the spread of imported wine in China, the Chinese people would know even less about wine." At the China Wine Association Wine Branch Council expansion meeting, Wang Qi said.

In 2023, the lagging domestic wine has come out of the trough. China produces more wine than it imports. Industry statistics show that the national winemaking wine industry has completed a total production of 300,000 million liters of wine, an increase of about 3%. According to customs statistics, the volume and value of wine imports fell by 26% and 19% respectively. Since the introduction of temporary measures on Australian wine, from 2020 to the first half of last year, Australian grape imports have dropped from 86,000 to 105 kiloliters, and the proportion of total wine imports has dropped from 27% to 0.14%. Australian wine's market share in China fell to 0.07 per cent. From 2020 to 2022, except for Australia, wine imports in other countries and regions are also on the decline overall.

From competition to competition, the fundamental reason is that the wine industry is experiencing a category crisis.

According to IWSR statistics, from 2020 to 2022, the domestic wine market demand will be 750,000 million liters, 640,000 million liters and 500,000 million liters, a cumulative decline of 33% in three years. According to the China Wine Association, the apparent consumption of domestic wine has fallen by 38% in the three years from 2020. In January-June 2023, the year-on-year decline was 26%. This means that the sales scale of the Chinese wine industry is smaller than that of the rice wine industry.

The output of wine producers fell from 1.16 million litres in 2015 to around 140,000 litres last year, and wine imports fell to less than half the 2015 level. Some say the Chinese wine market has fallen to the point where it can't fall any further.