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Counterfeit Aussie Wines In China Threating $143 Export Market

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:18:12 +0000

The appearance of fake Australian wines in China could hurt trade with one of the largest export markets, worth an estimated $143 million.

Chinese wine companies have been exposed in producing counterfeiting Australian wine, which include fake Penfolds Grange bottles, and promoting these across stores and industry trade fairs in China.

This rort is not exclusive to the larger winemakers such as Penfolds. Even small Australian wine makers in South Australia have made claim fake versions of their wine has been seen for sale in China.

Emanuel Skorpos of Flinders Run recently visited China after reports that his wines had been copied by Chinese producers.

In a Shenzen wine store, My Skorpos found and bought two bottles of his own Kieras Bin 05 2008 Merlot. These wines are now being analysed in Australia. When he inquired about his own wine, the shop keeper stated that he could locate other Flinders Run wines and as many as he wanted.

Mr Skorpos is concerned of the impact on his company’s sales as well as that of other Australian wine producers and the blemish this has caused on Australian wine overall in one of Australia’s key export markets.

“It’s bigger than my issue,” Mr Skorpos said. “It’s about Australia’s export wine market. The Australian government needs to do something.”

China has been the industry’s fastest growing export market. Since 2004, wine sales have increased 84 per cent each year and last year 46 million litres of Australian wine was exported China, 21.5 million litres bottle and 23.5 million litres bulk.

The AWBC (Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation) has been informed of this counterfeiting activity in China.

Steve Guy, AWBC’s GM for Compliance and Trades, said “I’m not going to deny it doesn’t happen.”. “It would be naive to deny that there’s never been a case of counterfeit Australian wine in China, but we need evidence before we take action.”

He stated that if it was proved non Australian wine were being labelled as Australian, this would become an issue for the AWBC; otherwise fakes or trademarks and intellectual property abuses would be up for for individual wine companies to battle.

Penfolds, who make premium brand Penfolds Grange has been particularly targeted. You can now find wines called “Benfolds” in industry fairs in China which claim to be Australian made.

Matt Bahen, of The Wine Republic said “I’ve seen a ‘Penfolds 888′ [8 is a lucky number in China] and even ‘Benfolds’ with the same cursive ‘P’ but instead it’s a ‘B’.”.

He continued by stating “But brand pirating is not a huge threat to our industry because, apart from Penfolds, Australian brands don’t yet have levels of awareness, or aren’t in the price bracket to make them attractive pirate brand candidates. There are isolated cases — but it’s not our biggest threat.”

“Our biggest threat is cheapening ‘brand Australia’ with random branding in the hope of dumping more containers in China. If we start off cheap and treat Chinese consumers as fools then it’s going to bite us.”

According to intellectual property lawyer, Stephen Corrs of Corrs Chambers Westgarth, the wine booth and promotional material looked very similar to Penfold’s branding. Even images of the famous Penfold’s winemaker, Peter Gago, were on display at the booth.

Mr Stern, owner of the Penfolds brand, had worked with Chinese authorities earlier this year to end a counterfeiting organisation in Guangzhou where fake bottles of wine seized.

Merlot, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz the most popular wines being exported to China. These particular wine types are most likely being copied.

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