Home brands hurting wine
Home brands hurting wine
by Paul Sellars & Leslie White
THE wine industry’s peak body has called for laws to curb the surge in supermarket home brand wines.
Winemakers’ Federation of Australia chief executive Stephen Strachan said genuine wine producers urgently needed protection from the “devastating” impact of home brands.
- Should the Government curb the rise of homebrand wine?
Mr Strachan said the Federal Government should introduce US-style laws to create a three-tiered distribution system that discouraged them.
He said such a system would prevent retailers from vertically integrating, as each of the three tiers – retail, wholesale and production – had to be separate financial entities.
“Our major customers in Australia are also our major competitors, which doesn’t happen in the US because of its three-tiered system,” he said.
A Coles spokesman said calls for US-style laws were an “over-reaction”. “Everyone knows the problems in the wine industry are caused by weather and overproduction, not by sales of private label wines,” the spokesman said.
“This is just a political agenda to use supermarkets as scapegoats for other problems that the winemakers’ federation doesn’t want to face up to.”
But Mr Strachan said retailers such as Coles and Woolworths were deliberately packaging home brand wines to look like they were from genuine wine producers.
As a result, consumers were often buying wines on the mistaken assumption they were supporting a winery-owned brand.
Consumer Affairs Minister Craig Emerson said the Government was not considering any such laws.
“I endorse the stocking of lower-price, own-brand products because they often represent a better deal for the consumer,” Mr Emerson said.
But Australian Food and Grocery Council chief executive Kate Carnell said it was “absolutely amazing a federal minister would support one brand of product against others in the marketplace, particularly as branded products are Australian and employ Australian workers.”
A spokeswoman for Woolworths declined to comment.
