Winepress - July 2024

WinePRO teamwork

Collaboration and connections are at the forefront as industry gathers for trade show

BEV DOOLE

WINEPRO WAS a big event on many accounts – New Zealand’s biggest wine trade show, with big ideas discussed at the speaker conference and big connections made throughout the industry and beyond. It was also the biggest collaboration between Marlborough District Council and Wine Marlborough, ignited by the Council’s 2022 Economic Wellbeing Strategy that took a hard look at the strengths of the region and what is needed to make it grow. “One of the goals of the strategy is for Marlborough to be a leading agritech region,” says Mark Unwin, economic development programmes manager at MDC. “But you can’t be what you can’t see – we need to show what is being done in Marlborough and celebrate that.”

The three days of WinePRO at the end of June became such a showcase, attracting more than 100 wine industry suppliers and innovators to the trade show and about 290 people to the conference programme. “That combination worked really well,” says Mark. “You got the flywheel effect of people being with each other in the same location, seeing and hearing what was on show, and building collaboration along with it.”

Wine Marlborough general manager Marcus Pickens says having on-the-ground practicality alongside futurefocused speakers was a good formula. “The mix of topics was important. We were balancing issues of the here and now, like vineyard redevelopment, with thinking about the longer term, such as workforce and demographic changes.”

It was also an opportunity to see the industry from an outside perspective, says Marcus. “Inside the industry we’re quite pessimistic about the next 12-24 months. But having some external commentators praising what we’ve done, where we’re going and painting a brighter future as long as we proceed carefully, was important because we’re all feeling under pressure at the moment.”

Speakers such as independent analyst John Wilson highlighted that the past rapid growth by the wine industry is probably not going to be there in the medium term, and that needs to be managed, says Marcus. “We can’t just pull levers and say don’t plant any more, but we need to send the message that there hasn’t been an increase in consumption since 2020. And that’s something to be very careful about. We can’t just grow something and expect to sell it. We’ve actually got to grow value in the future.”

As for the value of WinePRO? It has exceeded the expectations of those driving it. “WinePRO was a brilliant test case for collaboration and what can be achieved. It would not have happened without Council,” says Marcus. “It was a true partnership, with Council supporting financially as well as getting involved in the mahi. Wine Marlborough is tiny in terms of staff and resources but we can work together well.”