Zoe Moffatt
As the Chinese government begins its five month review into tariffs imposed on Australian wine, local winery Hanging Rock is hopeful the trade block will soon be lifted.
In November 2020 with summer just beginning and hope on the horizon following months of COVID lockdowns, the wine industry was slapped with a tariff of up to 218 per cent on exports to China.
At the time, China accounted for 33 per cent of Australia’s export revenue and the imposition of tariffs saw the value of exports to China plunge from $1.2 billion in the year to 31 December 2019, to $8 million for the 12 months to June 30, 2023, according to KPMG.
Hanging Rock general manager sales and marketing Ruth Ellis said the tariffs came in basically overnight, and meant the business had to be restructured.
“Like most Australian wineries that export, the impact of the tariffs from China has been massive,” Ms Ellis said.
“Before the tariffs were put in place we were selling nearly half of our wine to China, and making quite a lot of wine specifically for that market.
“We really had no indication they were coming. They were imposed… when most of our customers were just about to place their orders for Chinese New Year. It’s amazing we survived it really.”
Ms Ellis said in a lot of ways the tariffs made the company better and more resilient, with a new focus on the winery experience.
“What we’ve done is put a lot of time and effort into our customer experience, here at the winery,” she said.
“We now have one of the largest sculpture exhibitions in Victoria- Art in the Vines. We’ve also renovated our cellar door and added produce platters.
“Things like this happen around the world all the time, just very rarely in Australia, to Australians.
“I used to joke [that]… ‘doing business with China is great, but we all know they could just shut the gates tomorrow’.. and that’s exactly what happened. We all knew the risks.”
Ms Ellis said they all hope the future looks good, because as an industry it needs to be, at least in the short to medium term.
“We’ve been exporting wine to various countries for roughly 30 years now. This isn’t the first time we’ve lost a major market overnight.
“When the tariffs are removed we are expecting sales to come back at about a quarter of what they were and we will have to build it back up over time.
“It will also take us some time to build up our wine supplies again.”
