Cooks McWilliams plans to be top producer

Press, 5 December 1985, Page 62

Cooks McWilliams plans to be top producer

Shareholders in Cooks N.Z. Wine Company Ltd—now formally Cooks McWilliams, Ltd—were offered few prospects to tickle their palates at the annual meeting.

The chairman, Mr B. P. Hopkins, reaffirmed the views expressed in the annual report that there was little prospect of the company returning to profit this year.

He indicated that until the wine industry was able to solve its problems as a whole, Cooks would remain in a difficult situation. However, he said that Cooks had deliberately set its strategy, which temporarily meant difficult times, to see the company emerge as the top wine producer in New Zealand.

When the industry returned to normal times, which would not be this year, the directors believed that Cooks would emerge as the leader in profitability as well as in sales. He emphasised that the company’s future would not have been assured had the

directors not taken the unpalatable steps so far put in place. His sentiments were echoed by his fellow director, Mr Bruce Hancox, who said that what the company was doing was merely a matter of survival.

Emphasising that the problem was faced by the industry as a whole, Mr Hancox said solutions were still some way in the future.

As well as an “enormous surplus" pool of wine the industry faced a large surfeit of grapes coming in each year. The industry was looking to growers for some degree of cooperation in reducing supplies, he said.

With the present discount prices war, the company was recovering only 20 to 25 per cent of what it had paid for the grapes. In his address, Mr Hopkins said that, regrettably, New Zealand had a Government which was not displaying any sympathy towards the primary sector and had proven strongly

negative towards the wine industry. “The recovery therefore must be self-generated and we must be positive in the steps we take to ensure that it is so,” he said.

But he said that through a relationship with a major distribution chain in the United Kingdom, a most encouraging number of containers had been dispatched to fill repeat orders.

Referring to suggestions at last year’s annual meeting, Mr Hopkins said that a growers’ representative, Mr Jim Scotland, who was previously a director, would be invited to join the board. Mr Hopkins said he personally had never seen exports as the saviour of the New Zealand wine industry. “We know that we can make wine in most cases comparable to, and in many cases better than, the renowned wine areas of the world but I do not believe we can ever compete in meaningful terms while our domestic costs of production remain at the level they do.”