Wine industry plan sour

Press, 9 November 1983, Page 45

Wine industry plan sour

PA Auckland The plan on which the New Zealand wine industry has pinned its faith and its hopes for the last three or four years appears to have gone sour. The chairman of Cooks New Zealand Wine Company, Ltd, Mr D. E. Smythe, told the annual meeting in Auckland yesterday that when the Government in its wisdom referred the industry to the Industries Development Commission, the plan which evolved and was endorsed by the Government, clearly set the indus-

try on a development path. Mr Smythe said the position had been reached where plantings provided for in the plan had been achieved two years ahead of schedule and public consumption had levelled at 12 litres a head a year, compared with the projected and planned-for 16 litres a head a year. The planners had now deserted the industry, he said, leaving it with a major problem. There was no central reference body with a duty to maintain the economic

stability and viability of a worthwhile industry, even if only for its import-substitu-tion contribution of about $lOO million a year. Nobody appeared to be addressing the problem of grape and wine surpluses and the disastrous effect I these were having on profitability and stability, he said. Key major shareholders ' in the wine industry had ; attempted to deal with the • problem through a programme of takeover and I merger rationalisation, but ’ for one reason or another : this had been thwarted.