B.C. wine industry disappointed over losing edge at grocery stores
VANCOUVER Dirty Laundry winery in Summerland, B.C., estimates it will sell fewer bottles of red and white in grocery stores as shelf space previously reserved for local companies will soon be shared with U.S. imports.
“I don’t think it’ll be devastating, but it will certainly impact us,” said Paul Sawler, the winery’s director of sales and marketing.
B.C.’s wine industry will soon lose its advantage of dedicated grocery in-store shelf space — a practice deemed discriminatory through the lens of U.S. President Donald Trump’s America-first ethos — as grocers will have to make room for out-of-province offerings.
But with the Nov. 1, 2019 deadline for implementation more than a year away, those in the industry say it’ s difficult to know what the change will look like and just how hard it’ll hit local vintners.
Imported wines currently can only be sold at the province’s grocery stores in a so-called store- within-a-store model, which the U.S. has called discriminatory and complained about to the World Trade Organization.
The U.S. and Canada agreed to end the “ongoing trade concern” in a pair of side letters to the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
The change is not surprising, but is disappointing, said Miles Prodan, the CEO of the B.C. Wine Institute, a not-for-profit organization that represents the interests of the province’s wineries.
There are 271 licensed grape wineries in the province, according to the institute, and the industry contributes $2.8 billion annually to the B.C. economy.
The majority of the wineries are small in scale, he said, producing about 5,000 cases a year or less.
The grocery-store model was the only real channel many smaller operations had to access consumers, he said. “The growth of the sales for small wineries increased significantly,” he said. “Prior to that, and it continues to be, very difficult for small wineries to access retail stores,” he said, stressing the limited space within existing stores.