China-Australia relations: winemakers up Hong Kong shipments ‘hoping the door will open’ as Beijing ponders lifting tariffs

Australian winemakers have shipped millions of bottles of wine to Hong Kong in a bet that China will soon lift tariffs on Australian imports and revive a trade worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to industry figures and trade data.

Australia sent wine worth almost US$800 million to China in the year to November 2020, when Beijing responded to a call in Canberra for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 by blocking imports.

But China has been lifting trade barriers on other goods as relations improve and Australian officials and industry expect a review of the wine tariffs begun by Beijing last year will lead to their removal next month.

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Trade data showed that Australian winemakers sent almost 2.5 million litres worth US$65.5 million to Hong Kong in December, up from around 685,000 litres a month in recent years and the most since September 2019.

Among those shipping to Hong Kong is DMG Fine Wine, whose brands include Handpicked and House of Arras.

Chief executive William Dong said DMG typically sold one or two containers of wine a year in Hong Kong, but now had 10 in the territory, each containing around 12,000 bottles.

Most of the wine is earmarked for China, he said.

“We’re hoping the door to China will open and everything will go in … We are getting everything ready to go,” said Dong.

Hong Kong is a trade hub and potential staging post for deliveries into mainland China. It did not impose tariffs on Australian wine.

The shipments to Hong Kong are far below the roughly 10 million litres of wine a month that Australia sent to China before the tariffs.

The number of shippers was also smaller, with Industry body Wine