Quoting industry players, such as WOSA’s Su Birch, the Business Day newspaper is reporting that “after years of limited growth, the South African wine industry expects (local) sales to rise as economy continues to recover and local consumer interest is piqued”.
Encouraging for the top end of the market is that “more local consumers were buying premium wines and this could be attributed to the country’s slightly higher economic growth.”
However, the strong rand was still expected to impact negatively on international growth of South African wine sales.
The South African Wine Council last year estimated the wine industry contributes nearly R16 billion annually to the country’s GDP and provided employment for about 360,000 people (including the wine tourism sector).
The wine industry also contributes about R3.5 billion rand annually to the state coffers through excise duty and taxes.