Contribute your ideas for $50m investment
Wine Australia is inviting the Australian grape and wine community to submit new, bold, exciting and engaging ideas to help increase wine exports and inbound tourism to wine regions.
Submissions are sought from the wine sector and wine-region tourism operators to contribute to Wine Australia’s activities under the Australian Government’s $50 million Export and Regional Wine Support Package.
Wine Australia’s Chief Executive Officer Andreas Clark said the consultation will help to shape how the support package will benefit regional wine producers and assist export-focused businesses to continue to grow.
‘This one-off investment that the Australian Government has provided is an exciting opportunity for our grape and wine community to work towards increasing the premium paid for our wines and our global competitiveness’, said Mr Clark.
‘We’re encouraging people to suggest new ideas about how we can design activities to support further expansion of Australian wine exports, encourage greater penetration in markets or build new markets, and increase our capability to engage tourists through the four-year package.
‘We look forward to expanding our consultations with the grape and wine sector for this investment and designing and implementing a package that will help regional wine producers, wine-related tourism and export-focused businesses.’
Ideas will be considered by Wine Australia and a sector reference group, which has nominees from the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia, Australian Vignerons (formerly WGGA) and others from the wine and tourism sectors.
Wine Australia will then develop a business plan that details the activities that we will coordinate and measures of success for the program. The business plan will be submitted to the Australian Government for approval before activities can commence.
While submissions do not need to include comprehensive plans, questions people might like to consider include:
- What is the proposed activity?
- What is the target market?
- What research and experience demonstrates the value that this activity could bring?
- What does the activity depend upon? What is needed to succeed?
- How would the activity:
- Assist winemakers to export (e.g. export readiness)
- Enable greater access of markets (e.g. importer access, freight and sample costs)
- Increase the capability to engage tourists (e.g. tourist readiness, regional experiences)
- Build new and existing markets (e.g. visits program, wine trade shows, bespoke travel)
- How would these benefits be measured and how long would it take to achieve them?
- How long would the activity take and how much would it cost?
- What part and/or contribution would you make in the delivery of this activity?
Ideas can be submitted to Wine Australia through www.surveymonkey.com/r/Z3QV6WQ and can be made on the form by attaching a Word or PDF file, or using the comment box. Submissions close on Friday 9 December 2016.