Abrau-Durso aims to increase sparkling wine exports to 2 mln bottles in 2025

MOSCOW. Nov 8 (Interfax) - Abrau-Durso Group , Russia's leading maker of sparkling wine, expects to increase exports to 2 million bottles in 2025, group president and chairman Pavel Titov said.

"At this point the results [for exports] are modest, but we hope to reach 2 million bottles in exports. This will probably already happen next year," Titov told reporters on the sidelines of the third Russian Winemaking Forum on Thursday evening.

He said the company is stepping up efforts to increase international sales, since exports to a number of markets have dropped to zero "for obvious reasons."

Speaking about the prospects of exporting to China, he said "this is a very difficult" market.

"There is little understanding of wine in the country, not just Russian but in general. But we see big potential. You know, in China something can have no movement for a long time and then grow with explosive force, so one can't ignore this market. This is why our greatest efforts on promotion are on the Chinese market," Titov said.

He also said Russian producers will supply enough domestic sparkling wine for the New Year. "There will be enough sparkling wine, prices will probably not change until the end of the year. Basically, there will be a New Year with a sparkling mood," Titov said.

Strategy Partners partner Vladimir Shaforostov said at the forum that grape wine consumption in China has been declining since 2018 "due to more popular Asian trends, the penetration of the market by Korean, Japanese traditions of alcoholic beverage consumption."

"And grape wine is gradually being pushed out by beverages such as soju, various rice wines. A number of beverages are growing in percentages with double digits," he said.

Nonetheless, the Chinese market remains formidable and Russia can win a certain share of it, he said. "The issue of positioning Russian products is important here. It should be said immediately that Russian wine is known in China, certain brands, certain regions of production and grape origins. And in general they're prepared to buy Russian wine. But there is competition, both with local producers in the economy segment and with European and Australian producers," Shaforostov said.

A member of the management board at Russian-Chinese company Sunrise Group, Mark Pen, citing data from Statista, said wine consumption in China will total 1.5 billion liters in 2024.

"Considering the population, this is very little in per capita terms. The culture of wine consumption in China really needs to be cultivated from scratch. This is a difficult challenge. Chinese wine imports decreased by 64% from 2018 to 2023, although there is a positive element against this backdrop. In the first half of 2024, imports of wine from Russia rose by 10%," he said.