Portugal’s wine exports in 2021 seen rising 8.6% to €930M

Exports from Portugal’s wine sector are estimated to have totalled €930 million last year, up 8.6% compared to 2020, according to an analysis by Informa D&B, a business consulting firm, published on Friday.

“Exports from the wine sector in Portugal will reach €930 million in 2021, which represents a growth of 8.6% compared to 2020, according to an Informa D&B sector analysis,” the company said, highlighting that about “40% of this value corresponds to fortified wine, especially port wine, with a weight of 35% of the total.”

According to the firm, “France, the United States and the United Kingdom are the main foreign markets, each with a share of more than 10%” of Portugal’s wine exports.”

Informa D&B also concluded that the sector’s trade surplus “increased to €770 million, because, also in 2021, wine imports fell to €163 million, 1.8% less than the previous year.”

In the same analysis, Informa D&B states that “the volume of wine production in the 2021-2022 campaign amounted to 7.3 million hectolitres, up 14.2% on the previous campaign, which had registered a drop of around 2%,” with “the Douro/Porto and Lisbon regions being the most important (20% of the total volume each), ahead of Alentejo (18%), Minho (13%), and Tejo and Beiras, both with 10%.

“After the upward trend recorded between 2017 and 2019, the number of companies active in the wine sector has fallen, standing at 1,373 in 2020 (-1.1%),” it adds, stressing that “employment in the sector also retreated in that year, to around 10,800 workers.”

Small companies predominate in the sector, “with the average number of employees per company remaining at 7-8 people since 2014,” it notes. “There is a clear concentration in the North, where around 43% of the total number of companies are based, followed by the Centre (31%) and Alentejo (14%).”