We’re all in the same boat: Shipping disruptions mean Australia’s wine industry supply chain must plan and work together now.  

The representative bodies for Australia’s growers, winemakers and wine industry suppliers are urging businesses to plan early and work collaboratively as the industry’s supply-chain struggles to manage major disruptions and cost increases in freight and shipping.

Australian Grape & Wine and Wine Industry Suppliers Australia Ltd (WISA) are joining forces to get the message out to members and the industry.

“Like every industry reliant on sea-freight, grape growers and winemakers are feeling the impacts of freight and shipping disruptions over recent months” said Tony Battaglene, Chief Executive of Australian Grape & Wine.

“Costs are increasing dramatically across the board and it’s proving very difficult to access spots in containers. This will have an impact on our exports in the short-to-medium-term” said Mr Battaglene.

But these concerns extend beyond securing container space for exporters. Grape and wine businesses are facing significant delays on many of the inputs they need ahead of Vintage 2022.

“It’s never been more important for grape growers and winemakers to be talking to their suppliers as early as possible ahead of the coming vintage” said Shirley Fraser, Executive Officer of WISA.

“We want to make sure all businesses understand how major this impact will be so that we can start working together to manage the potential problems ahead of us.” said Ms Fraser. “In preparing for next vintage, businesses cannot rely on taking the usual just-in-time approach to securing the inputs they usually rely on”.

“This is a complex global problem without any easy solutions,” said Mr Battaglene. “We’ll keep working to explore potential remedies, but in the meantime we need to work together to understand the impacts of these cost increases and delays and engage with our supply-chain partners in an empathetic and collaborative way.”

Australian Grape & Wine is hosting a free Pre vintage livestreaming event  on 4 November, which will provide an outlook on this issue and the likely impacts of China’s tariffs on Australian wines. We encourage all businesses along the supply chain to attend.

Australian Grape & Wine and WISA have a diverse network of members in logistics, importing and advisory, and welcomes contact for those in need of connection to solutions and referral to key contacts.ection to solutions and referral to key contacts. - see info below. 

Freight and logistics issues are critical for the wine industry and will flow onto our supplier network so being informed will help understand what is in the pipeline.

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Media Contacts           

Available for Interview: Tony Battaglene, AGW Chief Executive – 0413 014 807 / tony@agw.org.au

Media Contact AGW: Damien Griffante, 0423 094 943 / damien@agw.org.au             

Media Contact AGW: Ali Laslett, 0424 135 381 / ali@agw.org.au

Media Contact WISA: Shirley Fraser, 0449 704 409 / eo@wisa.org.au

Media Contact WISA: Jason Amos, WISA Chair 0423 055 165 / chair@wisa.org.au