Wine Australia and Australian Grape & Wine have announced that the One Grape & Wine Sector Plan will be launched on 2 August 2024. According to a statement issued to media, the plan will be “a collaborative, whole-of-sector effort, to reset the path to achieve the sector’s ambitious goals originally outlined in Vision 2050.
“Every business and every organisation will need to act, often making hard decisions to ensure collectively we learn from the past, respond to the market and challenges of today, while charting the course for tomorrow,” read Wine Australia’s and Australian Grape and Wine’s joint-statement.
The new plan will seek to recalibrate the long-term goals of Australia’s wine sector in accordance with feedback from its workers. This includes focus areas such as promoting stronger leadership from industry organisations, recognising the need to flag industry problems requiring urgent collaborative action, and further guidance on actions that wine businesses can take to aid recovery. Various factors have caused the current need for an amended Sector Plan.
“Since the development of Vision 2050, the sector has been pushed off course, facing challenges including recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, bushfires, drought, increasing operating costs, reduced returns, over supply, and trade impediments,” read the statement.
“The One Grape & Wine Sector Plan is not a ‘set and forget’ exercise, nor does it replace the plans of the past. Rather it provides the critical recalibration for the sector to be able to achieve those goals.”
Australian Grape & Wine’s and Wine Australia’s One Grape & Wine Sector Plan is also being used as a key component in shaping Wine Australia’s five-year strategy.
In an interview Drinks Trade conducted in May, Wine Australia’s CEO Martin Cole said, “we’re just about to go into a new five-year strategy, so taking on board a consultation from the One Sector Plan, the Minister’s Task Force, and then really putting that into the next five-year strategy, which will be really important for us, but more important and very important for the industry too.”
Wine Australia had announced several changes to its executive leadership team shortly prior to Drinks Trade’s chat with Martin Cole.
“Those changes, I’m pretty confident, will be the right people to lead those initiatives in the next coming strategy cycle,” said Cole.
The plan will be officially launched on 2 August at this free Wine Australia Adelaide launch event. Wine Australia is encouraging all Australian wine industry representatives interested in export and marketing opportunities to attend: “this includes, but is not limited to, exporters, grapegrowers, wine producers, wine associations, wine marketers and wine communicators,” said a spokesperson for Wine Australia.
The Friday event will also serve as a networking opportunity, with attendees encouraged to bring a bottle of wine to showcase for others during the networking lunch.
More details about the One Grape & Wine Sector Plan will be unveiled at the launch event. In their joint statement to media, Wine Australia and Australian Grape & Wine received mixed feedback from the industry they represent.
“We are confident the changes align with the feedback received, reflecting the sector’s collective commitment to proactively shape a vibrant future for the Australian grape and wine sector,” read the statement.
“We appreciate the patience as the sector’s feedback has been incorporated.
“This demonstrates the strong sentiment within the sector to get it right.”
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