Australia-Low dollar helps wine sales.

AUSTRALIA.

WINE PRODUCTION UP.

Production of wine in Australia, has been good this year, while domestic consumption was up 11% in December to 36 million litres, exports were down by 14% to 53 million litres.

The value of exported wine for December was $185 million.

The low dollar, has been the biggest help to export sales, stopping Chile and Argentina getting contol of the valuable European market.

The low US dollar, has made Californian wines very competitive in Europe.

Australia exported 717.2 million litres of wine, for the 12 months ending June 2008, with a total value of $2.7 billion.

This is a drop of 8.9 %, on the previous year’s exports and an increase of 11% on domestic consumption