Report on French wine from France to China

France shared about one third of the import wine market in China. And China is now the fifth biggest export destination for French wine. In Figure 1, we briefly describe the main process of French wine from France to China.

Figure 1. Main Process of French Wine Supply chain

The supplier in the supply chain is the French vineyard. The manufacturer, winery, purchase the grapes from the vineyard and ship the wine to bottling estate. The French wine import company, as the distributor, import different brands of French wine and then distribute all the French wine to retailers in China such as Carrefour and Walmart. At last, Chinese customers can buy French wine from these retailers. Regarding to the organizational network in this case, wineries or agencies of the import companies play the role of shipper. And the import companies play the role of consignee. At port of arrival, the financial flows are from import companies which is the distributor to the forwarder and bank; from forwarder to customs, inspection authorities, on carriers and shipping line agent; from shipping line agents to port authorities, port services, customs and terminal operators. At port of departure, the financial flows are from shipping line agents to port authorities, customs, port services and terminal operator; from forwarders to insurance companies, pre-carriers and shipping line agents; from wineries or agents of import companies, which are the shippers in this case, to the forwarder. And connect the organizational network in ports of departure together with the network in ports of arrival, the financial flow also exists from banks in ports of arrival to banks in ports of departure and from banks in ports of departure to the wineries or agents of import companies. When it comes to the logistics network, the goods flows generally follow the main process of the supply chain. Wines are bottled by bottling estates and stuffed in empty containers and then transported to the export terminals. Containers with wines then collected and loaded on sea vessels and arrive import terminals. At last, after discharged from sea vessels, wines can be collected by import companies and distributed to retailers. If we put the supply chain processes into a cycle view, the procurement cycle is between wineries/bottling estates and vineyards/bottles suppliers. The manufacturing cycle is between wineries/bottling estates and French wine import companies. The replenishment cycle is between French wine import companies and retailers such as Carrefour and Wal-mart. And the customer order cycle is between retailers and customers such as restaurants and individuals. On the other hand, if restaurants or other customers place orders directly to the import companies, the import companies bypass the retailer such as Carrefour and Wal-mart, then the customer order cycle will be between customers and import companies, and the replenishment and manufacturing cycle will be between import companies and wineries. If we put the supply chain in a push/pull view, retailers execute the process in the customer order cycle after the customer order arrives. All processes that are part of the customer order cycle are pull processes. And other processes from suppliers to retailers are push processes because they respond to speculated rather than actual demand. If we also take direct order from customers to import companies into consideration, the push/pull boundary will be between import companies and customers, and import companies will be the actual retailers in this situation.

There are several transport activities involve in French wine. First, vineyards ship fresh grapes to the wineries. Second, wineries will use the producing process to brew wine. Third, wines will be transported to bottling estates to subpackage them to wine bottles or just handled by bulk in barrels. Meanwhile, empty bottles and corks are transported to bottling estates for bottling French wines. No matter what kind of packages, bottles or bulk, wine will be loaded to containers. The containers which load wine bottles or barrels will be shipped by sea transport or air transports.