By James Wells
An Australian family winery has predicted the inaugural ProWine Asia will become the main wine fair for South-East Asia.
Andrew Calabria meeting with Indonesian buyers at ProWine Asia in Singapore
Andrew Calabria of Calabria Family Wines, has told TheShout that ProWine Asia launched in Singapore last month provided his business with the right access to South-East Asian markets and he expects the event to only improve in the years to come.
“One of our main business objectives in participating in this fair was to recruit potential distributors and importers from Asian countries,” Calabria said.
“The show proved to be very successful and I believe this will grow to be a main wine fair for South East Asia.”
The 6,000 square-metre ProWine Asia Singapore exhibition was held alongside the 20th version of the Food Hotels Asia exhibition stretching across 97,000 square metres.
ProWine Asia is the third global event accompanying ProWine China held in Shanghai annually in November and the world’s largest wine and spirits exhibition – ProWein – held annually in Germany each March.
According to the Global Head of ProWein, Marius Berlemann, the Australian market is ideally positioned to take advantage of growing Asian markets.
“Both South East Asia and China are seeing increasing consumption of wines and spirits from affluent consumers, and this will consequently lead to an increase in demand,” he said.
Wine Australia recently confirmed that the Chinese and Hong Kong market is now bigger than the US wine market with a 66 per cent rise in the last year.
Calabria told TheShout he believes the ProWine Asia Singapore show fulfils the business objectives for wineries looking for distribution in South-East Asia and also for those with existing networks,
“This event is suitable for wine suppliers that have limited representation in South East Asian countries but limited to countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. For existing wine suppliers, it is a good event to gather existing customers to discuss business plans.”
The inaugural ProWine Asia featured 8,285 visitors from 44 countries doing business with 250 wineries from over 30 countries including several wineries from Australia including: Bunnamagoo, Chateau Yaldara, Cheviot, Dog Ridge, Emmetts Crossing, Fishbone Wines, Harvey River Estate, Hollydene Estate, Irvine Wines, Jack Estate, Lavina Wines, Limestone Coast Wines, Prosperitas, Steinborner, Roy Kidman and Thorn-Clarke.