New platform for Australian wine grape growers receives grant of almost $1m from Australian government

A consortium of three organisations - Australian Grape & Wine, the Inland Wine Regions Alliance and Wine Australia - has received a grant of $989K to build an online wine grape price indicator platform.

The digital platform is intended to provide wine grape growers with access to timely and accurate pricing information to help better understand the market.

The funding comes via the Australian government’s Improving Market Transparency in Perishable Agricultural Good Industries initiative. The three organisations will jointly oversee the project with Wine Australia as the lead.

Minister for Agriculture and Northern Australia David Littleproud said the funding would support Wine Australia to work with  Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) on improved wine grape price forecasts and commodity analysis to be published on the new digital platform.

“Better market data, insights and information available to the sector helps all players to make better business decisions and mitigates against bargaining power imbalances," he said.

A range of data and benchmarks will be available including wine grape crush, prices, export and domestic sales and bulk wine prices.

Wine Australia General Manager Rachel Triggs said the project would fill a significant knowledge gap in the domestic market. 

“Independent price forecasts will help 6,000 independent growers negotiate prices and also make informed decisions about future production.

"Reliable data on domestic sales will offer a clearer picture of supply-demand balance in the medium term and help identify trends, while in the longer term, robust price forecasting will redress imbalances within the sector and increase market efficiency,” she said.

In addition to the platform, the project will establish a dataset of domestic wholesale sales figures based on collecting transactional data from wineries. This will align with the export dataset maintained by Wine Australia and allow a comprehensive picture to be provided of total Australian wine sales.

Tony Battaglene, Chief Executive of Australian Grape & Wine, said this project would fill a crucial gap in information currently available to the sector, and would provide wineries and growers with valuable insights into how the market is performing.

“The domestic market is by far the largest single market for Australian wine, accounting for over 40 per cent of production. Identifying trends and indicators in this market is a very important part of understanding the overall picture of supply and demand,” Mr Battaglene said.

“A significant value-add for the project will be the ongoing preparation of commercial winegrape price forecasts by ABARES as part of their normal activities.”

The project is expected to commence in July 2022 and be completed within 3 years.