Domestic wine cellars, useful to conserve wine suitably also at home, are more and more diffused and refined from the technical and aesthetical point of view.
The wine cellar for domestic use is a relatively new appliance, available on the markets for few years; for this reason, it is not present in the sector statistical surveys cared by trade associations or research agencies, yet, and it is not easy to find information about the market in the specialized media of the sector.
Only exception in Europe is the French association Gifam that, even if it does not introduce this appliance among the items of its yearly statistics, however dedicates a short typological and technical dossier to it. In the same dossier are reported some “key figures”: the fleet amounted to 1.5 million appliances in 2013, equipping 5.6% of French dwellings; the almost totality of purchases, i.e. 89%, is first installation; 28% of the appliances in use do not reach 2 years of age.
These limited news let us deduce that annual sales were around 14% of the fleet, that is to say 210,000 units. This corresponds to one appliance sold every 320 inhabitants, since the French population consists of 67.2 million inhabitants.
Even if it refers to 2013, the mentioned dossier was released by Gifam in February 2018, therefore more recent data are not available.
In an article published on the sector review NeoMag they affirm instead that in 2016 the fleet installed in France consisted of 2 million units, with the 7.2% presence in houses. Nothing is added about the sold quantity and we can suppose it is not very far from 200,000 units. However, it is specified that 98% concerns the first installation.
Besides, they indicate the following typological subdivision of the fleet and of sales: service cellars 75%, ageing cellars 21% and conservation cellars 4%.
Reference reality in the French market is Frio Group, which states to hold almost the 50% share. Its brands are La Sommelière, Climadiff and Avintage.
Concerning the other European markets, in the same context they report that French, Belgians and Swiss are attracted by the models whose price is included in a range from 500 to 800 Euros, whereas British and Germans prefer those with prices included between 800 and 1,200 Euros.
Further evaluations concerning these markets are not available but some media affirm that the diffusion degree of the appliance does not vary sensibly among the various West Europe Countries. Only in Germany they do not exceed 4%.
According to that, it is possible to estimate yearly sales approaching 200,000 units, as in the French case, also in Great Britain and Italy, Countries that have a number of inhabitants slightly inferior to France’s, as well as in the more populous Germany (82.7 millions), where the minor diffusion rate compensates the bigger potential market. Concerning the smaller mentioned nations, i.e. Belgium and Switzerland, sales are likely to consist of some dozen thousands of appliances.
United States are the only non-European Country where some data are available. The 8.7% presence of the appliance in houses is indicated by the research agency Statista. Since the houses surveyed in the Country are about 126 millions, this results in an installed fleet of almost 11 million appliances. Hence, we can hypothesize sales ranging from 1 to 1.5 million units yearly. In the first case, this corresponds to one sale every 326 inhabitants, in the second to one every 217.
In its turn, the Market Research agency affirms that in 2016 the sales of domestic wine cellars in the United States of America achieved a global value of about 600 million dollars, with the 2.7% annual average growth. Leaders in the US market are Haier, Whirlpool and Eurocave Groups.
Despite the scarcity of data, we can state that the sales of domestic wine cellars are growing in all wealthy European and American nations. However, growth rates are quite different in the various nations.
The relatively high prices currently hinder the appliance diffusion: in no Country the presence rate in houses reaches 10%. Nevertheless, this situation is likely to change very soon: Chinese producers, and in particular Qingdao, Foshan, Resour and others, are releasing new low-cost models, which will make big brands’ prices collapse, strongly boosting the market.
