Marlborough grape growers’ co-op wins top business award
Blenheim’s Marlborough Grape Producers Co-operative has won two regional Deloittes Top 50 business awards.
The three-year-old company won the Fastest Growing Agribusiness and Fastest Growing Export Company awards on Wednesday in the regional Canterbury and upper South Island categories of the competition.
MGCchairman Ross Flowerday said the two awards justified all the hard work done by the board, advisors and the management team in the past three years to get the co-operative ‘‘up and running.’’
‘‘The awards affirm the decisions made by our members who see benefit in growing for a locally owned co-operative company who returns all profit to its members, rather than building the balance sheet of external investors,’’ he said.
MGCbegan before the 2013 vintage to gather fruit from small to medium sized grape growers and package this into larger parcels to make wine.
The co-operative had 70 members and was on track to harvest over 10000 tonnes of fruit in 2016, he said.
The growers body had markets in the United States and Australia and had developed new business in Asia and the United Kingdom.
The co-operative did not own brands, but sold finished 100 per cent Marlborough sauvignon blanc to buyers with their own brand programmes.
‘‘We find buyers who see value in sourcing wine from a cooperative and want to use a ‘‘vineyard gate to glass’’ story as part of their marketing,’’ said general manager Craig Howard.
‘‘Once we have done that, we make wine to their specification that fits their market.
‘‘We would be one of a handful of Marlborough-based wine companies that has sold the entire production from the last three vintages before a berry was even picked.’’
‘‘In real terms, the cooperative returned [more than] $4 million to its grower members in the past two years than they would have received if they had been growing grapes at ‘district average’ pricing, Howard said.
‘‘That money is now circulating in the local economy and helping sustain other local businesses.
‘‘Not a bad start for a company three-years-old and the future looks even brighter.’’