Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) has announced that it is closing its Matua Auckland winery in New Zealand, as well as its Great Western winery here in Australia. The closures form part of the company’s supply chain optimisation plans.

Instead, the winery, packaging and cellar door site in Auckland will be consolidated to the Matua Marlborough winery, while operations at the Great Western winery will cease and potentially be sold, if not used for a different operation in the future. TWE is currently working through plans to decide what to do with the Great Western site.

The Matua Marlborough winery was recently expanded under a multi-million dollar investment and already currently handles the majority of TWE’s New Zealand winemaking. Bob Spooner, TWE Chief Supply Officer therefore said it made sense to simplify and consolidate the production in Auckland to Marlborough.

While in Australia, Spooner said the Great Western winery was under utilised. “So we are ceasing operations and moving production into other wineries in TWE’s Australian wine production network in order to reduce costs and remove unnecessary complexity”, Spooner said.

TWE says the changes will not affect any of the company’s brands of existing supply contract arrangements with grape growers, however the moves are expected to impact on a number of roles. The precise extent of these impacts is still being worked through as the company finalises the resourcing needs for its new production footprint.