Big-drinking Britons lift Aussie sales

SYDNEY - Australia's wine exports climbed 15 per cent to a record last year helped by an increase in British sales, Government statistics show.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said Foster's, Southcorp, McGuigan Simeon and other suppliers exported A$2.71 billion ($2.94 billion) of wine to more than 20 countries in 2004. Export revenue grew about 1 per cent to A$2.36 billion in 2003.

Australia, the biggest wine exporter outside Europe, is benefiting from rising consumption and an increase in demand for higher-priced bottles in Britain, which is picked by French industry group Vinexpo to become Europe's largest wine market by 2008.

Sales of Australian wine to Britain jumped about 20 per cent to A$964 million last year and, in 2003, Australia overtook France as Britain's biggest supplier. Vinexpo said the British market was expected to reach 6 billion ($15.87 billion) by 2008, from 5.1 billion in 2003.

Exports to the US, the second-biggest market by value for Australian wine, rose 8.4 per cent last year to A$896 million while sales to Canada jumped 20 per cent to A$224 million.

In December, export revenue to all destinations increased by 20 per cent to A$228 million. Only the wine exports of France, Italy and Spain are worth more than Australia's.

* In San Francisco, a measure to ban genetically modified crops in the heart of California's wine country has qualified for a local ballot, officials say.

Gregory Conko, director of food safety policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the measure, which would impose a 10-year moratorium on raising genetically engineered crops and livestock, was now eligible for the Sonoma County ballot and could be voted on as early as May.

"It's an important symbolic victory for biotech's sceptics," Conko said.

"It certainly is something that should make supporters of biotechnology, including myself, a little bit nervous."

If the measure is approved, Sonoma would become the fourth Californian county to ban raising genetically engineered foods.

Ben Drake, chairman of the California Association of Winegrape Growers, said genetically modified wine grapes were not grown in Sonoma but farmers were interested in using genetic engineering to develop products to replace pesticides.

And Henry Miller, a Hoover Institution fellow and past director of the US Food and Drug Administration's office of biotechnology, said without biotechnology, Sonoma's wine industry could be disadvantaged.

- BLOOMBERG, REUTERS