OUR REGION’S WINE GIANT
20 MILLION BOTTLES SOLD A YEAR
A $7 MILLION investment in its plant is set to see Geelong’s oldest winery increase its grape-crushing capacity by about 50 per cent over the next two years as it targets growth in the export market.
The expansion of its highly automated crushing, fermentation and storage systems will allow Idyll Wine to process about 20,000 tonnes of fruit a year, up from its current throughput of about 13,500 tonnes.
Idyll currently exports about half of the 20 million bottles of wine it produces at its Moorabool operation, while in Australia its major clients are Coles and Aldi.
Executive director Andrew Byers said that since a change in ownership 2½ years ago pro- duction at the winery had doubled using the available capacity, but there was now a need to add more crushing and storage capacity.
“We will probably look at over the next 18 months at about $7 million of investment,” Mr Byers said.
This year the company plans to add four million litres of fermentation and storage capacity to its massive winemaking operation, which currently holds 17 million litres. A further three million litres of capacity is planned for the following year.
Mr Byers said the accompanying bottling system ran 24hours a day, five days a week, but there was still significant unused capacity.
The scale and efficiencies of the operation allow the production of quality wine at a low price point.
“We still have the art and the science of winemaking that goes into it,” Mr Byers said.
“We are still treating every wine that comes through as a batch, it’s just a bigger batch.”
He said by drawing on the efficiencies of volume and size, Idyll could deliver a product at the right price which also had consistent quality every year.
Idyll produces a range of products, involving a vast number of brands, available on the shelf from $5 to $40 a bottle, but it is heavily geared to the under $10 market.
Mr Byers said the quality of wines at the more affordable end of the market had improved dramatically over the past decade on the back of increased competition, improved skills and systems at wineries and vineyards and because it was coming off a low base.
“You can get really, really good value at that price point,” he said.
“(But) you need to drive efficiencies, otherwise you are not going to be able to compete.”
Focusing on the very commercial, high-volume, low-cost market provided a quick return on investment which in turn has allowed Idyll to keep reinvesting in its operation.
“It allows us to put the equipment in place to be able to maximise the quality, and minimise the wastage, minimise the cost,” he said.
Last year Idyll added a $1 million state-of-the-art clarification and filtration system to further improve its winemaking process and only a few weeks ago a $10 bottle of Arcadian Shiraz from Idyll won Wine of the Year at the London Wine Competition.
“We really are a facility that prides itself on being very, very lean,” Mr Byers said.
“We are very structured, very production focused, looking at saving cost anywhere we can.”
Idyll was created by industry pioneers Nini and Daryl Sefton in 1966, was owned by the Littore Wine Group from 1997 until it went into receivership in 2015, after which it was taken over by former employees Mr Byers and Michael Birthisel, and majority shareholder Costa Asset Management.
Mr Byers said the company was keen to respect the original Idyll brand and produced chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier in that name from its own vines.
But almost all the fruit is trucked in from contracted vineyards in major grapegrowing regions in NSW, South Australia and northern Victoria.
With stable volumes domestically, the growth opportunity is in exports, particularly in servicing the booming Chinese market.
“The Australia wine industry has seen 35 per cent growth from China,” Mr Byers said.
“In China, there are so many opportunities and many different routes to market. We run multiple strategies.”