Two months after Accolade Wines announced it was ending its co-bottling deal with TWE in Australia, TWE has given notice that it will be cease using Accolade’s bottling facilities in the UK.
The two companies struck their reciprocal bottling agreement in 2012, but The Australian Financial Review recently reported that Accolade was preparing to spend $40m on a glass bottling plant and warehouse at its Berri winery.
The new Accolade facility will be ready in around 18-24 months, will employ 40 people and have the capacity to bottle eight million cases of wine annually.
Accolade currently bottles its wine at TWE’s Wolf Blass production facility in the Barossa Valley wine region and will end the agreement once its new facility is up and running.
Many of TWE’s European brands are currently packaged at Accolade’s enormous facility in Bristol, but the company has announced it won’t renew the agreement when it ends in three years time.
Accolade’s reshuffle comes ahead of its planned $1 billion-plus ASX listing in the first half of 2017.
However, the AFR reports “fund managers have been seeking reassurance from Accolade’s management and 80 per cent owner CHAMP Private Equity that the backwash from the Brexit vote and the potentially slow unravelling of the European Union won’t cause things to go sour.
“The British pound has taken a thumping and is down around 20 per cent since June. Close to 50 per cent of Accolade’s earnings come from the United Kingdom.”
