Removal of Chinese tariffs sees imports of Australian wine surge – Technologist

The value of China’s imports of Australian bottled wine last month was 2,952 times more than in September last year, before the removal of punitive tariffs, with volume totalling 3.51 million litres, according to the latest customs data.

In the first nine months of this year, China imported bottled wine from Australia valued at US$335.5 million – 613 times more than in the same period last year, and 57 per cent of the amount in the first three quarters of 2019. That made Australia, with a 32.32 per cent share of the imported wine market, the second-largest wine supplier to China after France, which had a 1.65 percentage point lead.

That saw Australia’s share of China’s imported wine market plunge to 0.06 per cent last year from 37 per cent in 2019, when it was the largest supplier.

Previously, Australian wines imported into China had been subject to zero tariffs after the signing of a free-trade agreement in 2015, giving them a 14 per cent tariff advantage over many other wine-producing nations.

In the first nine months of 2019, before the pandemic, China imported US$589 million worth of wine from Australia. For the whole of that year it imported 120.8 million litres of Australian wine valued at US$812.2 million.