Australian Vintage Limited, or AVL Wines, has become a clear example of how a producer in the food and beverage space can benefit from diversifying product offerings while moving towards a Net-Zero target. Adam McCleery writes.
Australian Vintage owns prominent wine brands across Australia including McGuigan Wines, Tempus Two, Barossa Valley Wine Company, and Nepenthe.
Australian Vintage head of sustainability, Lucy Nash, said the product portfolio of the company afforded Australian Vintage the ability to engage with consumers of all tastes across Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
“The brands allow us to celebrate these beautiful wine regions around Australia while also bottling those and taking them to consumers across Australia and internationally,” she said.
Nash added that company exports a significant amount of product to the United Kingdom.
“We currently export our McGuigan Wines and Tempus Two brands and while these both have cellar doors in the Hunter Valley region, they both celebrate the wines of Australia,” she said.
“All our wine is made at our winery in Buronga Hill, on the border of Victoria and New South Wales, it is such an incredible site and facility. The scale of it, in the River-land’s region. It is an incredible region.”
Celebrating Australian regions is one of the key focus areas for Australian Vintage, and to do that the company builds strong networks across some of the best the country had to offer.
“We bring in fruit from our own vineyards around the country, in the Riverland, Hunter Valley, Adelaide Hills, and Barossa Valley,” said Nash. “We also have some leased vineyards and purchase from some growers. We do all three methods to allow us to access the best fruit and meet market demands.”
Today, Australian Vintage crushes approximately seven per cent of the total Australian production of wine, making it one of the largest producers of its type, and has also allowed the manufacturer to continue to diversify and innovate.
“We are seeing more expansion,” said Nash.
“We are always looking at celebrating what is inherent to these beautiful regions but also exploring new varietals, especially ones that are perhaps more adaptive to changing climate conditions and consumer taste.”
Nash said putting the consumer at the heart of everything we do is an important factor in successfully reaching the market.
“Consumer insight drives all our brand marketing efforts and ultimately our innovation pipe-line, looking at what varietals and regions consumers are excited about and where we can serve people by meeting them where they are,” Nash added.
Australian Vintage will continue to celebrate the heritage of the brands and regions from which they come, but Nash said innovation and looking to the future was what would ensure the continued growth of the company.
One new consumer need that Australian Vintage identified, and since capitalised, was the rise in low and no-alcohol beverages.
“We are seeing a focus currently around no and low alcohol wines in the wine space,” said Nash.
“As a result, we’ve invested significantly in technology and machinery which helps us produce beautiful premium wine and then spin off the alcohol to make lower alcohol, seven per cent wine, right down to a no-alcohol wine.
“We are seeing the response in our McGuigan Zero range and in the Tempus Two Lighten Up and Zero range that is launching currently.
“We are seeing huge trends around moderation in consumption of alcohol and our McGuigan Zero is in the number one selling zero-alcohol wine in both Australia and the UK.”
Nash said the true innovation around no-and-low alcohol was because it catered to the changing tastes of the consumer and tailoring to different drinking occasions
“That is in the wine space, but more recently we have also moved into the drink’s category,” she added.
Leveraging its world-class assets and innovative know-how, the company recently expanded into spirits and ready-to-drink cocktails to diversify its portfolio and de-liver products that consumers are demanding.
Developed in response to global drinks trends each brand offers a distinctive point of difference – from a world-first gin to a playful sustainable spirit and high-quality cocktail convenience.
“While moving towards a more circular model in how we produce our wine packaging and create a more sustainable consumption and business model, we are also creating high-quality gin products repurposing the alcohol that is spun off from the low and no alcohol line innovation,” said Nash.
“Using a combination of traditional and non-traditional extraction and distillation methods, we just launched a beautiful gin product called Rescued Spirit Co.”
The Rescued Spirit Co range sees imperfect fruit not suitable for Australian super-markets being repurposed by Australian Vintage.
“This is the first line of spirits under that brand which is exciting because it brings this ESG strategy to life and delivers on a number of those pillars,” said Nash.
The idea came about when Australian Vintage realised it had a by-product from the no and low alcohol production process which was perfectly suited to spirits, being both innovative and circular.
“We create the no and low alcohol wine, spin off the alcohol and that grape spirit is distilled with local rescued citrus fruits from the Mildura region,” said Nash.
“Using imperfect fruit that may not have made it into homes of people around the country, we can create a fresh and zesty gin blend that takes a by-product of our biggest selling line and also utilises local fruit to create something new.”
Nash also sang the praises of the innovation team, “The team have been thinking quite laterally, not only about our core product but expanding into other realms to deliver on something that serves consumer demand and gives us something new to talk about with retailers and the market,” she said.
The product diversification is a big step for Australian Vintage and signals the company’s commitment to being more sustainable in its production processes.
“This is a signal of our transition from an established wine company into one that exists for the future,” said Nash.
Australian Vintage chief executive, Craig Garvin, said the ESG journey is an important one for the company.
“Sustainability is paramount to our success in the futures,” he said.
“It’s a critical issue but also one of the biggest opportunities of our time. It’s more than a social license, it’s a value creator and a key driver for innovation.
“Consumers want to support brands and businesses that put people and planet first and we’re seeing this in the purchasing decision of our customers.” The first focus area of the company’s ESG framework is centred around net zero targets and Nash said the team at Australian Vintage has set out some bold goals moving forward.
“We’ve taken this global best practice around balancing environmental and social impact,” said Nash.
“Alongside our financial performance, and from an environmental perspective, the number one issue is around climate change
and what business can do to take responsibility for our contribution to that.
“Over the past two years we have been doing a very deep assessment of our carbon emissions to find out exactly what is the footprint of our global organisation.”
From a base year of 2021 Australian Vintage has set its net zero target date for 2040.
“That is ten years ahead of the UN 2050 deadline,” said Nash.
“We are really proud of the way we have framed our targets using the best practice climate science available now.”
In order to make sure the target was achievable, the team at Australian Vintage used the best science available.
“Our targets are validated by the science-based target initiative and within that assessment criteria we not only have to set our long-term targets but a short-term target to make sure we AVL Wines has also embraced ambitious sustainability targets.
are on track to meet that,” said Nash.
“Our short term is 2030 and that is encompassing scopes one, two, and three for emissions across our entire supply chain.”
Nash said the decision for Australian Vintage to set bolder goals than many other organisations was carefully considered.
“That sets us apart from a number of organisations that understandably are just starting out with emissions that are under their direct control and might not be tackling the scope three emissions that we are trying to tackle from the outset,” she added.
The flow on impact of these decisions is also expected to impact other areas of the business, all with the net zero target goal in mind.
“This is the kind of target that will impact our entire procurement strategy and how we work with partners and select like-minded business for things like transporting our wine across the world or providing dry goods for our packaging and other materials that make up the bulk of our emissions profile,” said Nash.
Nash also commended the entire team at Australian Vintage for the dedication and commitment being shown when it came to setting audacious new sustainability goals.
“Our team has embraced these ambitious targets because it helps us build a stronger framework for decision making around the future of the business,” she said.
“It’s not to say that everything we build follows the same model, but this consideration goes into every project moving forward to ensure we’re serving our community alongside our footprint.”
Garvin also reiterated the future of Australian Vintage.
“We are on a journey, with an ambition to be net positive in everything we do,” he said.