Page 76 - NEWNORMAL_ANIMATED

NEW NORMAL

That speaks for the extraordinary quality that 16.4% more Austrian wine was sold through
our growers bring to the market year after year”, this segment in 2020 – with this increase be-
comments Yorke. ing equally distributed across red, white and
In September, the second wave of COVID-19 rosé wines. The higher sales were fortunate-
was already bringing renewed restrictions and ly not linked to any reduction in the average
a negative impact on exports, both in terms price: revenue through this sales channel in-
of volume and revenue. Figures for the year’s creased by 16.6%, with the average price per

final quarter are not yet available, but export bottle going up slightly to €5.39 (compared to
figures for the full year are expected to be €5.38 in 2019). Austrian wine’s market share of

slightly down at around 62 million litres (2.4% total wine sales through the multiple grocer
down on 2019) and €175 million (4.4% down segment grew to an impressive 74.9% – the
on 2019). highest market share since 2000 (the earliest
year of data available).
DOMESTIC MARKET: ON-TRADE The closure of physical stores consequently
LOSSES COULD NOT BE RECOUPED led to a strong shift towards e-commerce re-
When the hospitality industry was forced to tailers. According to GfK, the number of online
close its doors in mid-March 2020, Austrian wi- purchasers increased between October 2019
negrowers saw their most important sales chan- and October 2020 by 48%, rising to around
nel disappear for two whole months: looking 124,000 people. On average, these consumers
back at 2019, hospitality and events account- spent almost €60 per order.
ed for 58% of all wine consumption in Austria. „I think e-commerce has ‘come of age’ in 2020,“
The second lockdown from 3 November 2020 concludes Yorke. “This sales channel will not
onwards (with estimated end around Easter lose momentum in the future either. However,
2021) saw this situation of hardship extend to stationary retail will not disappear from the sce-

a third of the year. The figures for total wine ne - but specialist retailers in particular need a
sales released by the GastroData market re- very clear profile and a well-considered range. In

search institute appear to be strikingly in line any case, what became apparent in 2020 on the
with a lockdown of such proportions. From part of the winemakers is the enormous impor-

January to December 2020, the on-trade who- tance of a differentiated sales strategy. And that
lesale channel saw sales drop by 33% compa- is also a very central insight that Austria‘s wine-
red to the previous 12 months. Despite seeing makers will take with them into the future: to
some positive trends in other sales channels, build more pillars in order to make their unique
they were not able to compensate for the huge wines available to the growing number of inte-
slumps experienced through the on-trade. rested parties worldwide - whether through dif-
The three-month closure of the hospitality ferent markets or different sales channels.“ ƅ

industry led to a significant increase in wine

consumption at home. According to market
research institute GfK, sales of Austrian wine
for consumption at home rose by 17.3% in
terms of volume and increased by 18.1% in
terms of revenue. Particularly noteworthy is
the fact that the proportion of households
that exclusively bought Austrian wine grew to
47.3% – the highest rate since 1997.
Multiple grocers benefited from a notice-

able increase in sales. According to Nielsen IQ,
76