Year-end boom for Australian wine-sellers fizzles

Sydney

AUSTRALIAN wine exporters should be preparing for their peak selling season - the months preceding Christmas and the Chinese New Year celebrations in China. They are instead watching stockpiles of product mount in warehouses as its biggest market clamps down on shipments.

Already on edge after China announced two trade probes into the country's wine industry earlier this year, people familiar with the situation said this month that Beijing had also ordered traders to stop purchasing at least seven categories of Australian commodities - including wine, rock lobsters, barley and copper ore. It was the most sweeping trade move against Canberra yet.

The prospect of indefinite bans would be a worst-case scenario for Australian exporters, who have already…

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