Leading internet trading platform Liv-ex has shot up the listings in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100.

The survey, now in its 13th year, ranks non-listed UK companies by their compound annual sales growth over a three year period.

It operates a business-to-business electronic wine-trading platform, charging a commission on each transaction. About 90% of its business is in Bordeaux wines.

At the same time Liv-ex provides constantly-updated information on prices of fine wines, based on actual merchant transactions.

With 265 merchants in 22 countries, it says sales have grown 76% a year from £5m in 2005 to £27.1m in 2008.

Miles told decanter.com that getting the product right has been important, but Liv-ex’s growth coincided with massive expansion of the internet, as well as the development of the Far East as a wine-buying hub.

In the last four to five years, he said, the site’s UK customers had changed from 80% to less than half. ‘Asia now accounts for half of our new members.’

Miles also said that the recession ‘had not been terrible’ for Liv-ex.

‘It has actually brought customers to the site because it was the only place to find out what the actual current price of a wine was – with all the discounts around people were unsure of prices.’

He added that the number of transactions had gone up, but the transactions themselves had got smaller.

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Adam Lechmere
Adam Lechmere
Decanter Magazine, Wine Editor & Writer

Adam Lechmere is consultant editor of Club Oenologique among other things.

Formerly launch editor of Decanter.com, which he edited until 2011, he has been writing about wine for 20 years, contributing to Decanter, World of Fine Wine, Meininger’s, the Guardian and many others. Before joining the wine world he worked for the BBC, and as a music and film gossip journalist.