A leading Thai research centre has called on Thailand's wine producers to urgently upgrade the quality of their Thai wine products do to win greater international acceptance amid fears that the liberalization of trade between Thailand and Australia in 2005 could see a rapid decline in the domestic market share for local produced Thai wine.

In its report, the KASIKORN Research Centre (KRC) warned that the enforcement of the Thai-Australian Free Trade Agreement (FTA), starting on 1 January 2005 will see an influx of good Australian wine at cheap prices appear on Thailand's market.

Noting that Australian wine had already become the second most popular wine in Thailand after the wines of France, the Kasikorn research centre said that Thai wine producers should upgrade the quality of their products as a matter of urgency.

Thailand's future FTA deals with other countries, including wine-growing nations such as the United States and New Zealand, could multiple the difficulties faced by local Thai wine producers, the report cautioned.

By upgrading the taste and certainly the quality of Thai wine, Thai vineyards would simultaneously work to maintain a large part of the domestic market share, and would win over new export channels opened up by the liberalization of trade in the future, the Kasikorn report says.