Plans to stock wine on supermarket shelves are in the dead in the water, the State Government announced today.
The proposal, put forward by the State Government in January, had lost the support of the state’s wine industry, Minister for Business Services and Consumers John Rau said.
“I’m frankly surprised about that,” he said. “But that is what they have told me, and I have to take what they tell me at face value. I think it may have been the case that the independent grocery people perhaps didn’t turn their minds as much as they might have to the reaction Coles and Woolworths would have had to the proposal.”
The proposal was initially sold as a way to open up a new market for South Australia’s wineries on the shelves of independent supermarkets, such as Foodland and IGA.
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But it quickly came under criticism because the change would have allowed large supermarkets, including Coles and Woolworths, to stock wine from anywhere, which local producers were worried would harm their business.
“Those objectives, whilst I still agree with them, and would still love to be able to see them implemented, were not going to be possible to be achieved through the proposal that we then put out,” Rau said today. “In particular there was no way that we could provide for a market opportunity in supermarkets which would benefit South Australian wine producers only.
“Nor were we able to prevent that opportunity being taken up by very large wine producers, the big corporates. Coles and Woolworths having the very dominant position they have in the grocery and retail market around the country would have been, as it turns out, significant potential beneficiaries of the change that we had proposed.
“We may well have seen an increase in the competitive pressure against the independent grocery section in South Australia.”
Independent bottle shops were also concerned that allowing wine into supermarkets would threaten their existence.
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