Removal of Chinese tariffs sees imports of Australian wine surge

Australia’s share of China’s imported wine market plunged to 0.06 per cent last year from 37 per cent in 2019

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Bottles of wine imported from Australia on sale at a supermarket in the Nantong Free Trade Zone in Jiangsu province in November 2020. Photo: VCG via Getty Images

Published: 7:00am, 28 Oct 2024Updated: 9:18am, 28 Oct 2024

A thawing of relations between Beijing and Canberra saw the value of Australia’s bottled wine exports to China climb rapidly in the first nine months of this year – bouncing back from near extinction in January, when import volume totalled just one litre – while those from major European competitors dropped due to shipping problems.

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.

The surge this year followed Beijing’s removal of punitive tariffs on Australian wine in March.

In 2020, Beijing imposed tariffs of up to 218.4 per cent on Australian wine and banned imports of lobsters and coal in response to Canberra’s call for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19.