ACBC View on China’s anti-dumping investigation into Australian wine
ACBC notes the announcement on August 18 by China’s Ministry of Commerce that it is launching an anti-dumping investigation into Australian wine exports to China.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said it had received an anti-dumping complaint from the local industry on July 6 and as a result would investigate all wine imported from Australia in containers of two litres or less.
The ACBC has commenced a discussion about these developments with its members and relevant industry associations.
Our members in the wine sector are obviously concerned by this development or indeed anything that causes market uncertainty and potentially impacts participants in the Australian wine industry, including growers and wine exporters. They are not aware that wine is being sold at below market prices and exports are not subsidised.
Our members have strong, established relationships with distributors and customers in China who enjoy Australian wine. Those relationships have been built over many years through hard work and education by Australia’s wine industry promoting Australia as a consistent and reliable supplier of high quality wine to Chinese consumers.
Across Australia, it’s been a great story that’s seen significant ongoing growth in and across our wine industry over the last decade in particular. China is now Australia’s largest overseas wine market, accounting for $1.2 billion in exports in the year ending June 30. Australia is also China’s largest source of foreign wine accounting for 37 per cent of China’s imported wine by value in the year ended May 31, well ahead of France’s 27 per cent share.
Despite the major disruption to supply chains as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our winemakers and exporters continue to build on established trade relationships with Chinese buyers to ensure Australian wine continues to be available to Chinese consumers as China’s economy rebounds.
This is consistent with a number of other key other industries where the strong people to people and businesses to business relationships underpin ongoing efforts to continue a mutually beneficial two way trade relationship between Australia and China despite a range of current challenges.
We support statements by Australia’s Trade Minister Simon Birmingham that Australia will strongly argue the case that there are no grounds to uphold the claims being made. The Australian grape and wine sector is well placed to respond to this investigation and we note a media statement by the Australian Grape & Wine and “our exporting companies will cooperate fully.”
This is the start of the process and ACBC will be working with our members, government and other wine industry based associations during this investigation.
