BBX sees online wine trades grow to £11.5m

Published: 01 October, 2012

Berrys' Broking Exchange has seen the volume of online fine wine sales grow by 13% to £11.5 million as collectors and investors get accustomed to the platform.

Berrys' Broking Exchange, created by Berry Bros & Rudd to allow people to buy and sell fine wine from each other online, has seen 91,668 bottles of fine wine bought and sold on the exchange between August 2011 and July 2012.

The value of sales has also grown by 2% in the past year (compared to the same period in 2010/2011) as the value of trade BBX rose to £11.5 million.

The platform, which Berry Bros dubbed the "eBay for fine wine", launched in August 2010 and now has over 4,500 customers trading wines.

BBX claims it charges lower commission than auctions, and the idea is that its customers who hold wine "in bond" in its storage cellars, can sell their collections to other enthusiasts. Some of the most notable deals have included a six bottle case of 1999 Romanee-Conti, Grand Cru, which sold for £55,000 and a 12 bottle case of 1990 Chateau Petrus Pomerol was bought for £36,000.

Simon Berry, chairman of Berry Bros & Rudd, said: "Berrys' Broking Exchange has already attracted substantial interest from our customers - and from collectors and investors alike. We have around 27,000 customers who use our bonded warehouses and 4,500 of them have already started to use Berrys' Broking Exchange as a sales and buying platform, which is an excellent result in just two years.

"The fact that the wines are stored in our warehouses has meant that customers have greater confidence buying and selling from each other. Every case listed on BBX has been checked by our team to ensure that they are not damaged and that the provenance can be traced. Unlike some sales platforms, every customer can be confident that the wine exists and that it's quality has been verified."

BBX invested £3 million in a third wine warehouse to allow customers to store up to 2 million more bottles, taking storage capacity to 8.3 million bottles.

There are further plans to expand BBX business before the end of the year by enabling a "bid function" and developing a mobile site.

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