Wine selling goes transtasman

By Joe Helm

Matua Valley Wines of New Zealand and Australian wine company Rosemount Estates Pty are joining forces to establish a joint venture company to handle sales and distribution of their wine in New Zealand.

The company, Interwine Ltd, will have equal shareholdings between Matua, Rosemount and newly appointed managing director Baden Ngan Kee who was formerly general manager marketing for Allied Liquor Merchants.

Interwine will focus on Matua Valley and Rosemount brands at first but shareholders envisage it will expand its brand portfolio to include other premium New Zealand and international brands.

Interwine will begin operations on July 1.

Bill Spence, joint managing director of Matua Valley Wines said Matua distributed its own wines at present.

"Rosemount are joining in with that to form the stand alone company," he said.

"We need to be able to offer customers a wider range of wines. That will give us more clout.

The new Sale of Liquor Act which proposes to open up Sunday trading and the sale of beer and spirits in supermarkets is likely to increase sales opportunities in wine retail outlets."

The Matua Valley sales and marketing team will be the people involved in Interwine and with the added support of Rosemount sales and marketing expertise.

Mr Spence said the major liquor distribution companies could not sell enough of Matua Valley wine as they had a lot of other brands to market as well.

He said the Interwine joint venture was not the forerunner of anything else between Matua and Rosemount.

"We are not for sale and they are not for sale but it is a good match.As family companies we have both built up extensive vineyards producing premium fruit and control of our own wine making facilities as well as sales and marketing operations".

Mr Spence said Rosemount produced about 2.5 million cases of wine a year of which more than 70 per cent was exported.

Matua Valley produced 30,000 cases and exported about a third of that.