New company in charge of wine marketing in Hungary

2010-02-24

The Association of Hungarian Grape and Wine producers (MSZBSZ) set up a new company to deal with the marketing and promotion of Hungarian wines. The new company, called Kozossegi Bormarketing, which will focus on the promotion of high-quality Hungarian wine for export, represents a number of producers controlling up to 50% of the wine market in Hungary. However, some of the prominent wine producers and distributors are against this initiative and claim that a tender should be announced in order to entrust an association or company to be in charge of the marketing activity of domestically produced wines. The promotion of Hungarian wine will be financed from the Bormarketing Fund, which currently amounts to HUF 800m (€2.9m), raised from the HUF 5-10/litre contribution of domestic producers.
Wine consumption in Hungary totalled 350 million litres in 2009, while domestic production was 320 million litres, out of which 128m litres were sold for export.