In its annual report, France’s wine and spirits exporters federation, the FEVS, says global sales rose 6.4% in 2002 to 7.7 billion euros, after a two-year decline.
The increase was largely due to dynamic growth in Champagne, up 15.1% in value and the sustained development in liquors (+ 12.1 %) and brandies (+8.5%).
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However, on the downside, French still wines continued to lose market share to competitors, falling 4% in volume and value.
For the first time, Australian wines surpassed French wines in volume terms in the US.
While the consumption of its wines hadn’t wavered, the economic crisis has seen distributors, who are operating more and more to the just-in-time cycle, destocking massively, the FEVS general secretary, Louis-Régis Affre, explained.
In the first nine months of 2002, French wines lost ground in six of their eight major markets. Only Belgium and Japan resisted the trend.
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By GlobalData
“In the beginning, international competition was concentrated on the UK market in particular,” Affre said. “But has now extended to the US and Germany. If France doesn`t react we are going to be pushed into a corner by the New World (operators) and also by the Italians and Spanish.”
As for the outlook in 2003, changes in euro-dollar parities are going to weigh on French operators performance as, North America accounting for one-quarter of their exports, he added.
