(Yicai) Dec. 4 -- China will review the anti-dumping and countervailing duties it imposed on Australian wines nearly three years ago.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said on Nov. 30 that it had accepted the proposal of Australian Grape and Wine filed on Oct. 31 to review the imposition of anti-dumping duties of between 116 percent and 218 percent on Australian wine products implemented at the beginning of 2021.

Australian wines dominated the Chinese market before the introduction of the anti-dumping duties. In 2019, China imported 147.6 million liters of Australian wines worth USD860 million, accounting for nearly 36 percent of the total, according to data from the China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs and Native Produce. By the first half of 2020, the ratio had increased to 40 percent.

However, Australian wines' market share in China slumped after the imposition of anti-dumping duties because of rising costs. In the first nine months of the year, Australian wines failed to make China's top 13 imported wines list, CFNA data showed. The number of Australian exporters to China dropped to 115 from the peak of 2,382.

Although the review has just begun, Australian wine companies are already planning to return to the Chinese market.

Well-known Australian wine company Treasury Wine Estates said on Oct. 23 that it hoped to rebuild its export business to China if the anti-dumping duties are canceled.

Treasury Wine Estates' Chief Executive Tim Ford said in August that he would delay the global quota allocation of the company's high-end Penfolds-branded wines for this year by four to five months to wait and see if the Chinese market would open up again.

But China's wine market has changed much from 2019, according to industry insiders.

Since 2020, China's imported wine market has gradually entered a period of in-depth adjustments. China's imports of wines totaled USD2.9 billion in 2018 but halved to USD1.4 billion last year. The decline slightly slowed in the first three quarters of the year, but the value and volume of imported wines still fell 16 percent and 27 percent, respectively, from a year earlier.

Chinese wine distributors are also anxious about the performance of the imported wine market this year and next year. A wine merchant in Tianjin told Yicai that importers sold their products from famous wineries at low prices to recoup funds and that the company is now paying more attention to sales.

Editor: Shi Yi, Futura Costaglione