Folks, I am running into the same issue. What I figure out was the following:
1) I turn off the autocommit
2) I run the import for the first time
import "<SCHEMA_NAME>"."*" as binary from '<location>' with replace; rollback;
3) I get the error as described
SAP DBTech JDBC: [2048]: column store error: table import failed: [30117] Binary import failed (cannot execute drop statement)
4) I run this import once again and commit and surprisingly the error is gone and the import is successful.
import "<SCHEMA_NAME>"."*" as binary from '<location>' with replace; commit;