China’s wine importers are down a third. Some say half
Wu Yunping at the Shenzhen Wine Industry Association puts the drop at least one-third since 2019, maybe close to half. Jia Yanping at Interwine has watched houses that once brought 400 containers a year bring zero.
A missing importer is not always a missing wine shop. Sometimes the shop is still there. It just stopped booking containers.
Wu Yunping, president of the Shenzhen Wine Industry Association, told Vino Joy News the importer count has fallen by at least one-third since 2019, perhaps close to half, and will keep falling. Jia Yanping, co-founder of Interwine China, puts the recent drop around 30%. Firms that once brought more than 400 containers a year now bring none. Why? “They simply couldn’t sell the wine.”
Wu names three squeezes. People drink less wine; baijiu and beer took share; the young have not made wine a habit. Bulk wine bottled in places like Shandong undercuts origin-bottled table wine. And prices went transparent. A €2 bottle used to sell for hundreds of yuan. That markup is gone.
Stopping imports is not always leaving wine. Medoc 1855 in Tangshan used to bring in several containers a year. General manager Dong Huaicheng said they now pool orders and buy stock already in China. Lower risk, you can see the goods. Fang Yi at Puyi Fine Wine in Changsha said the same: his range is wide, each SKU is small, so independent importing does not fit.
Dong’s harder line: since 2019 the operating room of 80% of wine companies has been squeezed. The market is not large enough. Jia still sees occasions — a glass for yourself, on-trade, e-commerce, tourism — if importers stop living on the old markup.
Mini-concept: a shakeout can be a market growing up, not only a market dying.
A flavoured can never needed an importer. These firms either booked a container or they bought what was already in the country.
Remember: importer numbers down at least one-third since 2019 — some say close to half.
Source: Vino Joy News