• High potential for international wines on the Chinese sales market
  • Visitor campaigns in full swing
  • Wine industry in China looks to the future full of optimism

Early this year China lifted the quarantine regulations for entrants and fully opened its borders for international travel – good prerequisites for ProWine Shanghai 2023, which will return to the Shanghai New International Expo Center from 8 to 10 November 2023 and open its doors again to foreign exhibitors for the first time since the Covid pandemic. What makes this year so special:  ProWine Shanghai will celebrate its 10th anniversary and provide impressive proof of its role as the leading trade fair for the wine and spirits industry in mainland China.  

High demand on the exhibitors’ part 
Numerous international and national producers, regions and countries have already secured their exhibition areas for ProWine Shanghai 2023 at this early stage. The wide variety of French wine-growing regions will be staged by Business France, for example. Fittingly AXA Millésimes will present a selection of French wines and celebrate its debut at ProWine Shanghai. Wines of Portugal, Wines of Germany as well as the California Wine Institute will also attend with large national pavilions. Likewise Cantine Sgarzi Luigi, Italy’s official No. 1 wine exporter to China in 2021, as well as numerous operations from overseas will be represented again. 

Visitor-canvassing in full swing
This year will again see extensive measures planned to canvass important visitor groups in the run-up to ProWine Shanghai. In many Chinese cities promotion events of various sizes, formats and covering different themes are scheduled to address Chinese buyers – including events organized on the occasion of the Malbec World Day on 17 April in cooperation with Wines of Argentina, roadshows with the Yinchuan Wine Association and urban events with the California Wine Institute, Wines of Germany and COFCO Great Wall. As part of the 10th anniversary of ProWine Shanghai two bigger ProWine events will be additionally staged in the two business capitals Beijing and Shenzhen. The presentation at the China World Hotel in Beijing with around 100 participants will take place on 1 and 2 June 2023. The ProWine event at the Futian Shangri-La Hotel in Shenzhen is to follow on 30 June and 1 July 2023 with approximately 120 exhibitors. Both hotel presentations are the highlight of this year’s visitor-canvassing activities, serving as a kind of appetizer for ProWine in Shanghai but also for ProWine in Hong Kong. The target group exclusively includes professionals from retail and food service with a focus on the north and south of China. ProWine Hong Kong is an important trading platform and a showcase for the wine and spirits industry for the Northeast Asian market as well as South China. It will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 10 to 12 May, in parallel with the 20th HOFEX, Asia’s leading trade fair for food and hospitality.

Wine consumption is developing positively again in China
In China trade is generally expected to pick up and recover quickly again. Especially the Chinese Spring Festival has demonstrated that the economy in China is recovering slowly. According to data furnished by the Consumer Market Big Data Laboratory Shanghai spending during the seven-day festivities amounted to Yuan 32.2b, which corresponds to an 81.7% increase compared to the previous year’s period. The report on spirits consumption during the Spring Festival in 2023 published by the Jingdong Supermarket shows that the cities in the south are relatively free-spending and that especially the smaller metropolises have plenty of potential. Furthermore the whole market for wine consumption is on the move, according to the China Wine Distribution Association. Especially the younger generation is interested in wine and likes to consume it regularly. All of these developments underline that the Chinese wine market holds plenty of potential and that business platforms like ProWine Shanghai are more important than ever.