As the Spring Festival approaches, pre-festival wine sales are gradually coming to an end. Although the recently released customs data wine imports continue to pick up, but a number of interviewed wine merchants said that the wine market at the end of the year is still sluggish, failed to find a new growth road, and domestic wine listed companies have begun to seek a new way out.

On January 20, China Customs announced the wine import data from January to December 2024, the annual import of 1.59 billion US dollars, an increase of 37.2%, the import of about 280 million liters, an increase of 13.6%, which is also the first rebound since the total volume of the industry continued to decline in 2019.

Industry insiders believe that the growth of wine import data in addition to the end of some importers to restock, but also related to the return of Australian wine.

With the lifting of the double reverse of Australian wine on March 28, 2024, the import volume also increased rapidly, and in 2024, the amount of Australian wine imports was 550 million US dollars, returning to the first place in the list of Chinese wine imports.

However, in the wine merchants, although it is the traditional Spring Festival peak season recently, many interviewed wine merchants reported that the wine consumption market did not feel the rapid recovery this year.

At the end of 2024, Tianjin wine merchant Wang Wei just went to Burgundy, France to participate in a winery visit and ordering activities, he told reporters that he could feel the gradual recovery of wine business activities, but the Chinese wine merchants who participated in the ordering meeting were generally more cautious in signing the purchase, many wine merchants even joined hands to purchase in order to control the total amount, more is worried about the difficulty of selling and occupy funds.

This also reflects the concern of wine merchants about the uncertainty of the future wine market.

Many interviewed wine merchants said in an interview that compared with the previous Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day market, the sales of wine in the Spring Festival in 2024 have generally picked up, but there is still a gap compared with the same period in previous years, and the business in 2024 as a whole is not as good as last year.

Recently, Mogao shares (600543.SH) announced the performance of pre-loss announcement, is expected to return to the mother in 2024 net profit of about -45 million yuan to -60 million yuan, year-on-year loss of 3.56 million yuan to 18.56 million yuan, the loss further increased, of which the wine business continued losses is also one of the main reasons for Mogao shares performance pre-loss.

Although other wine stocks have not yet announced their performance, from the situation of the three quarterly reports in 2024, including the head enterprise Changyu (000869.SZ), the performance of domestic wine listed companies has declined to varying degrees, and many companies have suffered losses. Statistics Bureau data show that from January to November 2024, the cumulative domestic wine production of 103,000 million liters, down 14.2% year-on-year.

It is worth noting that since 2023, although domestic wine consumption has shown signs of recovery, it still faces problems such as limited popularity and ambiguous consumption positioning.

Zhang Tsunamis, head of Shanghai Cloud Wine Warehouse, said that this year's wine business has not changed much behind the old problems of consumer awareness, industry promotion, brand and other aspects of wine have not yet found an effective solution.

There are also old wine merchants who have been in the industry for more than 20 years that the current wine market is slow to pick up and there is a relative surplus problem, and his wine business in 2024 is also declining, because wine is not a necessity of life, and the market situation remains to be further watched as the economy gradually picks up.