The last year’s wine exports were very stable and we didn’t see much growth in the volume of exports on either bulk or packaged product. Contrary to this, the local market saw four exceptionally good years with the local market growing in 2013 by 4%, 2014 – 8%, 2015 – 9% and for the last 12 months from Sept 2015-Aug 2016, still growing at 8% in volume. This gives us a total of approximately 80 000 to 100 000 million litres more wine sold in the local market per year than four years ago.

Good news regarding wine exports, is that from September 2016 there was a significant increase in the amount of wine exported. By September 2016 there was an increase of 19% more wine exports than September 2015, and from October 2015 to October 2016, an increase of 13%. Most of this wine is in the bulk part of the market which grew by 7.6% in the last 12 months. White wine bulk volume was up by 10% while red wine was up by 10.5% and rosé went down in the last 12 months.

On the packaged side of the market the volumes were down, but it was still very positive to see that the value went up by 18.8% per litre. However, on the bulk side there was only a 2% growth in value per litre.

There was thus exceptional volume growth in the bulk market at a slightly higher price, whereas in the packaged market the volumes were down but with a significant increase in value.