SA wine giant lays off staff as multiple hurdles crush industry
Exclusive: Staff are being made redundant at one of the nation’s largest privately owned wine businesses, with rising fuel prices the latest migraine for the struggling industry.
Staff at the Randall Wine Group have been made redundant as the wine industry grapples with a grape oversupply crisis, rising costs, a drop in global consumption, and now exploding fuel prices.
InDaily can reveal that 15 marketing and sales roles were slashed in a new business restructure. Randall Wine Group – chaired by well-known industry figurehead Warren Randall – owns the SA Tourism Hall of Fame inductee winery Seppeltsfield, organic label Gemtree and McLaren Vale winery Penny’s Hill and is also looking to build a luxury hotel in the Barossa dubbed The Slug.
The redundancies represent about 10 per cent of the company’s workforce and included the team involved in sales to China, plus staff at Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley and the McLaren Vale Gemtree and Penny’s Hill wineries.
| Invalid YouTube URL Sponsored |
Some staff were made redundant just after the company announced its plans for Seppeltsfield’s 175th anniversary.
You might like
And the business is pulling back on sponsorship deals, with proprietor Randall telling InDaily the company was scaling back on “any of those things that are not revenue producing”.
The news comes during vintage for the industry, with Randall noting he was undertaking a review of his vineyards. The wine mogul previously revealed numerous pressures his business was facing, including wine grape oversupply issues, which Randall said could be alleviated by a coordinated vine pull across the wine industry.
He believed Australia needed to pull out a third of its vines to re-correct and “get back into balance”.
“If we don’t do that, we’ll remain in oversupply,” he said.
Today, Randall reiterated his desire for coordinated industry action on the wine grape glut.
He said Seppeltsfield’s vintage looked “absolutely superb: and “the best I’ve seen since I bought it in 2009” but would be addressing what to do with his own vines post-vintage.
Stay informed, daily
“We’ll be having a look at making our vineyards redundant. It’s not just human redundancies,” he said.
“How do we do that? Do we just put them to sleep? Do we just walk away from them and not pick them? Do we pull them out, which is another cost?
“Wine Australia should be saying to every vineyard owner in this country: ‘You need to remove a third of your vineyard holdings for the sake of this country’.”
Rising fuel prices, driven by escalating conflict in the Middle East, were yet another headache for the sector.
“We’ve got trucks delivering those grapes to the wineries using diesel. And our biggest issue right now is fuel costing us money – 35 per cent more than it did six weeks ago – which is a cost we just haven’t budgeted,” he said.
Rising petrol prices might also impact visitation to his wineries, Randall saying “A drive to the Barossa uses fuel, and people are trying to conserve it to get kids to school or do their shopping”.
“So yes, it is concerning.”
Addressing growing concerns over rising petrol prices and dwindling fuel supplies, Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen this morning said more than 500 million litres of fuel have been approved for release. It followed the Prime Minister yesterday announcing Anthea Harris as Fuel Supply Taskforce Coordinator, in charge of coordinating decisions around the petrol crisis.
“That will have an impact in the immediate future, as well as in the long term,” Bowen said.
Randall also recently closed the business’s Gemtree cellar door and the café at Seppelstfield temporarily noting “there’s been a number of pressures that keep closing regional cellar doors, which is disappointing”.
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
