South African bottled wines exports to China up 60%

Growing appetite among Chinese consumers for South African wines shows the country increasing the volumes of bottled wine sold in the People’s Republic by 60% for the 12 months to March this year, compared with the previous 12 months, according to SA Wine Industry & Information Systems (SAWIS).

Producers worldwide are looking to China to grow sales volumes and market analysts International Wine & Spirit Research (IWSR) are projecting that China's wine market will continue to grow annually in value to reach $6 billion by 2014. Wine Intelligence, a UK-based research organisation, expects that the number of Chinese wine drinkers will rise to about 34 million by 2015.

Rabobank has reported that China's market for table wine has been growing by around 20% per year for the last five years, with consumption now at about 1,48 billion litres, according to Euromonitor data.