France lament strong decline in wine exports

"It particularly hits expensive wines, champagne and AOC wines", says the director of studies at FranceAgriMer André Barlier. "In Europe it was especially exports of wines to Britain that diminished by a great amount", laments Barlier.

According to the study of Barlier, between August 2008 and March 2009, total sales decreased by 14,6 percent in comparison with the production period 2007/2008 which there was a decline of 12,4 percent only. Export quantities were 8.4 million hector liters in the current production period, which is a value of about 4 billion euro.

"This continuing decline is based on a slowdown of consumption in the export countries", says Barlier. "Even collectors and investors do not risk anything due to the current economic situation." Caroline Blot from FranceAgriMer, who researches cultural consequences, says: "In the cycle 2006/2007 we still had very good numbers, however, since then, the export numbers of our wine industry have been giving us a headache. We are even expecting some lay-offs and closures if nothing changes soon."

The commission of FranceAgriMer also researched the sales data of wine in the big national retail sales companies. Thus, the sales volume went down to 1.1 percent in 2007 for the first time, then in 2008 to another 2.5 percent. It was only Rosé wines that experienced an increase of 4.2 percent, white wines stagnated in this period by about -0.1 percent and red wines had a tough minus of 3.3 percent. (aw-yoopress)

*FranceAgriMer is an establishment of the public administration in France. The establishment was founded only on April 1^st 2009 and is responsible for studies of national products of agriculture and the sea.