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South Africa's wine exports have seen much light, during the first 8 months of this year, but also some shadow. The total exports diminished slightly from 2.56 to 2.54 m hl, with Great Britain suffering the greatest losses. Here, the quantity of imported wines from SA went down to 0.75 m hl (from 0.87 m), and this concerned first of all the bottled wines (from 0.61 to 0.48 m hl), which means that the importance of the tank business grew disproportionately.

The German market fared considerably better, growing from 4.66 m to 5.15 m hl with a consistent growth even for the bottle business (from 1.01 m to 1.38 m hl), always considering that the tank business is traditionally much more important here than in Britain. Germany is stable on the second place of SA's export market, the distance to the other markets growing rapidly.

While the total exports grew in direction of Ireland, Japan, Kenya, the Emirates, Nigeria and Thailand, a part from Great Britain even France and Russia shrank massively. In New Zealand (from 5.3 m to 0.96 m hl) and Angola (from 5.3 m to 0.76 m hl) the negative development was nearly dramatical. Among the markets which imported more bottled wines figured, a part Germany, Canada, Japan, Kenya, the Emirates, Nigeria, China and - surprise! - Russia as well as France.