Su has been CEO of WOSA for the past ten years and last year was named Drinks Business Woman of the Year. During her tenure the export of South African wine has increased from 100 million liters per year to 400 million. Here she speaks about the impending Soccer World Cup and the benefits which this event could bring to local wine marketing.
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Tags: ProWein 2010, s, Soccer World Cup, South Africa, Su Birch, WOSA
Jancis Robinson’s informative and current website featured an article discussing South Africa’s transition to lighter wine bottles. Like many things there is the balance between reducing the carbon footprint and retaining jobs for local workers to be considered.
The article is reproduced here:
Unlike most, South Africa’s wine industry is doing rather well in terms of exports, but this presents it with a problem in its attempts to be one of the world’s most ecologically sound wine making nations and self-styled ‘leader in production integrity’.
Su Birch, Wines Of South Africa
’As we raise our export volumes of mostly bottled wines, we also increase our carbon emissions, so it becomes a delicate balancing act to enhance our sustainability profile while pushing up our output’, explained Su Birch, CEO of Wines of South Africa (WOSA), one of the leading champions of the country’s efforts to grow, make and market wines in a way that is least harmful to the environment.
The response, just announced, is the introduction in South Africa of a 75 cl wine bottle that weighs only 350 grams, which will be available this year in time for Cape wine producers’ 2010 harvest. Scheduled for a launch in mid April, these compare with an average bottle weight of over 500 grams just four years ago. Read more of Sue Birch of Wines of South Africa on lightweight wine bottles
One of the blogs I read regularly is that of Jamie Goode because of his interest in South African wines. In this post he noted the increase of South Africa’s biggest wine export destination, the UK. Jamie sumarised the report as follows:
South African wines acheived the largest increase in UK market share in 2009 (10.4% of market to 12.3%, off-trade by volume) South African category grew by 24% in value and 23% in volume for the same period South Africa’s market share is only 0.1% behind France which is in decline Exports to the UK were up 14% by volume, maintaining the UK’s position as the leading export market for the South African wine industry accounting for 32% of total global exports Success from South Africa’s top brands helped to drive the category: First Cape, Kumala, Arniston Bay and KWV all grew significantly There was an uplift of 15% by value above 5 pounds, a 27% increase above 7 pounds and a 43% increase above 10 pounds
On the Wines of South Africa website, CEO Su Birch makes the observation that there had been a year on year global increase of 7% for South African packaged wine exports in 2009 compared with a drop of bulk sales of 18% . This is seen as positive trend and could an important stage in the evolution of the South African wine industry.
Wine corks
Strong growth in packaged South African wine exports last year were to Sweden (18%) and Canada (11%) as well as to Japan, Nigeria, Angola and China. The Netherlands, US and German markets had remained unchanged but Denmark had shown a decline of 5% which was partially offset by increased exports to Finland and Norway.
Tags: Arniston Bay, First Cape, Jamie Goode, Kumala, KWV, Su Birch, Uk
