China’s Dynasty Fine Wines reports financial loss for fifth year

China’s struggling wine producer and importer, Dynasty Fine Wines, has reported a further financial loss in 2016 for the fifth consecutive year, plunging the once second most valuable wine brand in the country into yet more uncertainty.

The loss, though more moderate compared with 2015, was the result of a slowing economy, tepid supermarket sales and competition from imported wines, the company said in a statement on its website, without specifying its exact sales figures.

In a report by Chinese newspaper Business Daily, it revealed Dynasty has lost about 90% of its distributors since 2012, not long before the company was suspended from trading in Hong Kong in March 2013 after it was found to have faked invoices and sold expired wines.

One employee working with the company told the newspaper that Dynasty now only has about 50 distributors that have wines worth more than RMB 1 million (US$145,000), down from 500 and 600 a few years back. Last year, the company was reported to be selling massive Bordeaux wine stocks to liquidate money to pay off company debts and employees’ salaries.

A listed company, Dynasty Fine Wines is a joint venture between Tianjin government and French Spirits giant Rémy Martin. In 2010, at its height, Dynasty Fine Wines was voted as the second most valuable wine brand in China only after Great Wall by China Association for Liquor & Spirits Circulation and China Brand Institute.

Most of its wine sales are from Tianjin in eastern China, its home base near Beijing.

dbHK has tried to contact Dynasty regarding comments about delisting rumours via email and phone call since last November, but no one from the company has replied yet.