Xiamen wine dealers make huge profits from imported red wine

Wine imports in southern Fujian, including Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, has reached 672.5 myrialitre in the first 5 months of 2011
 

Xiamen wine dealers are making surprisingly huge profits from Australian wines, which is leading to more wine imports, reports Xiamen Economic Daily.
 
Wine imports in southern Fujian, including Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, has reached 672.5 myrialitre in the first 5 months of 2011, with an increase of 78.4% compared with the same period last year, according to Xiamen Customs.
 
A bottle of wine worth RMB20 in Australia will cost the importer RMB32 to import it in China. The wholesale price is around RMB40, but the wine distributor will sell it for RMB80-100 in the supermarket, said Mr. Chen, a manager of a wine importing company in Xiamen.
 
The wine distributors make more profits in restaurants and liquor stores. The same bottle of Australian wine will cost consumers RMB 300 in liquor stores, said Mr. Chen.
 
One of the reasons why the price of imported wine is so high is that the wine distributors have pay a large slotting fee to enter liquor stores, which is a field that Chinese authorities fail to regulate efficiently, and naturally the wine distributors will shift the burden to consumers, said an economic expert.