About the project
Wine Australia, Australian Grape & Wine and the Inland Wine Region Alliance are working together to improve market and price transparency for Australia’s winegrape growers.
The outcomes from the three-year project will give Australia’s winegrape growers better access to market information, which will enable them to make more informed business decisions.
There are three deliverables:
- an interactive digital analytics platform displaying a comprehensive set of winegrape price indicators that will be freely available online
- an industry-owned domestic sales dataset of price and volume information on wholesale wine sales, and
- a strategic partnership with ABARES to prepare and publish independent winegrape price forecasts and commodity analysis for commercial grapes.
The project is expected to be completed by June 2025.
The deliverables of the project are being managed by Wine Australia. The project is overseen by a steering committee comprising representatives of Wine Australia, Australian Grape & Wine and the Inland Wine Region Alliance.
The improve winegrape price transparency project is funded by the Australian Government's Improving Market Transparency in Perishable Agricultural Good Industries initiative, with cash and in-kind contributions from Wine Australia, Australian Grape & Wine and the Inland Wine Region Alliance.
For more information on the project, contact the Market Insights team.
Outcomes to date
The first ABARES independent price forecast has been published (March 2023) as part of the Agricultural Commodities Report. See also the Wine Australia market bulletin providing an analysis of the ABARES supply forecast for 2027-28.
Background
The ACCC conducted a market study into the wine grapes sector in 2018-19 which looked at competition, contracting practices, transparency and risk allocation issues in the wine grapes supply chain. The market study focused on three inland warm climate regions: the Riverland, the Murray Valley, and the Riverina.
The final report was released in September 2019, and made ten recommendations focused on five key areas. One recommendation was to improve price transparency.
In late 2020, the ACCC conducted an inquiry into bargaining power imbalances in supply chains for all perishable agricultural goods (PAG) in Australia, which includes the wine grape industry. The inquiry recommended that the government and industries explore measures to foster price transparency and increase competition in PAG industries.
In 2022, the Australian Government, through the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE), committed $5.4 million in response to this recommendation forming the Improving Market Transparency in Perishable Agricultural Good Industries initiative.
Two workshops were held in 2021, hosted by the ACCC and attended by winegrape grower and winery representatives.
The key outcome was that the sector needs more powerful analytics, and the attendees supported the development of a digital analytics platform to provide an objective assessment of pricing.
It was identified that a key data set that should be part of the platform is an industry-owned domestic sales collection. Furthermore, an independent third party would then utilise the platform’s data sets to produce an annual forecast of warm inland grape prices for the coming vintage. It was identified that Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) would be the appropriate body to prepare and publish the forecasts.
The participants identified Wine Australia as the appropriate organisation to deliver the project.