Australian wine exports to be hit by coronavirus outbreak

February 5th, 2020

The Australian reported that Australia’s billion-dollar wine sector should expect to take a hit from its biggest export market, China, due to the outbreak and spread of the coronavirus.

Wine Australia, which released export data for calendar 2019 that showed a 3 percent rise in the value of wine exports to $2.91 billion, told The Australian that it’s still too early to quantify this expected impact to wine export sales into China due to the virus.

“Looking ahead into 2020, we anticipate that coronavirus will have an impact on sales, particularly to China, but at this stage it is difficult to predict the degree of that impact,” said Wine Australia chief executive Andreas Clark to The Australian journalist, Eli Greenblat.

“Also, our first concern is people’s wellbeing in China and elsewhere and there will be time down the track to consider other impacts.”