Haere Ra 2024: Waitaki
Te Kano Winemaker Dave Sutton looks at an excellent growing season against the pressure of competing land use.
The Good
We installed a bag-in-box machine in our Marlborough site this year, providing an opportunity to the wider industry to package wine in a different format. Initially focusing on 2 litre (fully recyclable) bags, we expect to see the first brands in market before the end of the year.
The Bad
The challenges being faced in wine markets around the world have certainly had a very real impact here: the backlog of stock in export markets, combined with slowing wine sales and general consumer uncertainty, has resulted in lower bottling volumes. These lower volumes have led to two restructures within our business, to match our resourcing with the expected workload. The disestablishment of a number of roles meant we farewelled friends and colleagues, including some longstanding ones. It has been a difficult process for all in our team, but we hope we are better positioned to meet our clients’ requirements in the future.
The Awesome
New Zealand’s two key glass suppliers, Chandler and Visy, both released lighter weight 390g bottle options this year. This innovation offered the wine industry a wider range of options and another tool in the continued project to reduce the carbon footprint of the industry. These bottles have been in market for many months now and we are seeing clients increasingly move to these as their preferred bottle option.
