We have been receiving an increased volume of enquiries about exporting wine to India and we wanted to outline some of the challenges and opportunities presenting wine exporters who would like to target the Indian market.
India is the fastest growing major economy in the world with a population totalling 1.33 billion. With a growing middle class and youthful population, it naturally presents an attractive opportunity for Australian wine exporters.
According to Wine Australia, Australia has been the number one exporter to India by volume for a number of years and held 35.5% market share in 2017/18. In 2017/18 Australia exported a record 1,857,287 litres valued at $7.23 million with red wine making up 70% of those figures.
The challenge to date has been that wine attracts a standard rate of import duty of 150%, putting India amongst the highest wine taxes in the world. Nonetheless, the figures above and feedback we are hearing is there is still a demand and market for Australian wine in India. Everyone is still on the same playing field and the hope is these taxes can only go down moving forward.
The Australian Government has been in negotiations with India to put in place a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement between India and Australia since May 2011. If such an agreement can remove or at least significantly reduce the import tariff on wine, those who have a foothold in the market will have a big opportunity in front of them. You only need to look at what's happened in China with the benefit of the China Australia Free Trade Agreement taking the wine import tariff to 0% from 2019 onwards.
So, while it is certainly still a challenging market to crack, if you have good networks within India we can certainly help take care of the Australian side. Please feel free to get in touch to discuss how we can work together or explore more here.
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