SYDNEY (Reuters) - Bellamy's Australia Ltd <BAL.AX> on Wednesday said Chinese authorities had lifted the suspension of an import licence of the company's cannery in Melbourne, bringing the infant formula maker closer to regaining ground in a key market.
News of the regulatory win sent Bellamy's shares up as much as 11 percent to their highest in eight months of A$8.76 ($6.89), while the broader index <.AXJO> rose 0.5 percent.
The Certification Accreditation Administration of the People's Republic of China (CNCA) had in July suspended the licence of Bellamy's recently-acquired Camperdown factory in Melbourne to ship infant formula to China.
The CNCA did not give a reason for the suspension, but Bellamy's said it had responded to the regulator's requests for information and that those had been accepted.
The reinstatement of the licence, however, does not mean Bellamy's can immediately begin exports from the factory, a company spokesman told Reuters by phone. It would need a further licence from the China Food and Drug Administration.
The company expects to obtain that licence next year, the spokesman added.
Formula-makers have been navigating a tough Chinese market since a 2016 crackdown on online imports led to new regulations requiring foreign vendors to register by 2018. Some skipped registering and dumped their infant formula, triggering a sharp price drop and a profit warning from Bellamy's.
Bellamy's said in March it would miss the January 2018 deadline and announced in June it was buying the China-registered Camperdown formula cannery in the state of Victoria as the centrepiece of a turnaround strategy.
It offered refunds in July to investors who took up shares in a A$60.4 million rights issue to back the strategy after the CNCA suspended the Camperdown licence.
China accounts for a third of Bellamy's revenue and a third of its pre-tax profit, according to its half-yearly earnings update in February.
($1 = 1.2713 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
