Grace Vineyard suffers profit losses due to Covid

Chinese winery Grace Vineyard achieved a revenue of 60.2 million RMB in 2020, a year-on-year decrease of around 17.2%, and a net profit loss of 2.5 million RMB, according to its 2020 annual results report.

According to the report, the company’s revenue decreased by RMB12.5 million or 17.2% from RMB72.7 million for the financial year of 2019 to RMB60.2 million for the financial year of 2020. 780,000 bottles were sold in in 2020, as compared to 1,097,000 bottles in 2019.

The average selling price increased from RMB66.3 in 2019 to RMB77.2 in 2020 as the increase in proportion of sales of our high-end level wine which has higher selling prices. The labels include Chairman’s Reserve and Deep Blue.

In the report, the company mentioned the impact of Covid had led to a 10.6% decrease in gross profit for the year of 2020 as sales activities were brought to a standstill, resulting to a decline in wine sales in the first quarter.

Fortunately, gross profit margin and net profit margin of the company in the second half of the year improved as the pandemic is gradually under control and their effort in actively exploring different ways to expand its market and distribution channels. At the end of 2020, they entered into cooperation agreements with several offline distributors to increase distribution channels. Currently, they also continue to actively seek cooperation with offline distributors in Shanxi region in order to spread sales risks.

Moreover, on top of the country’s rapid recovery from Covic, the company is also enthusiastic about the “14th Five-Year Plan” as announced by the Chinese government. The plan is to promote the balanced development among regions and the new-type urbanisation. It is beneficial to the difference between wine products and increases core competitiveness.

Financial credits support for the wine industry was also stepped up as detailed by the “14th Five-Year Development Guide for the Chinese Alcohol Beverage Industry” issued by the China Alcoholic Drinks Association.

The guide suggested fostering the blending of wine types and wine-making, enhancing the establishing complete agricultural loan risk transferring and compensation mechanism, enhancing the loan support for domestic leading wine corporates and promoting the development of the Chinese wine industry.

Moving forward, while wine production will remain as the important pillar for the company, the company is focusing on the new investment in its upcoming new gin and whisky business. As of September 2020, the design and initial preparations for the Fujian whiskey and gin distillery have been outlined already.

The board directors forecast the construction project will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2021. In the third quarterly report for 2020 of the company, the Fujian winery plans to produce gin in the first phase and launch the first batch of gin to the market as soon as possible.