Driven by powerful European environmental lobbies, the global wine industry needs to enhance is environmental credentials before authorities, the EU especially, makes it do so. With more attention than ever being paid on the carbon footprint left by wine, key areas like packaging and transport are already under the microscope. This has the potential to create unique problems for Australia and New Zealand, since many of the higher-end wines from both countries are packaged into glass bottles that were made in Europe, before many of the very same bottles complete their sea voyage back to Europe once filled with wine. Earlier this year we saw the recent launch of a new lightweight range of quality wine glass bottles produced by global glass container giant O-I at its Adelaide plant, as a direct response to these concerns.At the Wine & Spirit Trade Association conference in the UK, the CEO of Direct Wines, Simon McMurtrie urged wine retailers, suppliers and merchants to work towards a ‘green agenda’. ‘Most customers think that we’re pretty green. Well, we know the truth and the reality is that we’re not,’ he said, citing the cost of glass recycling and transporting wine around the world as two major areas of concern for the industry. The conference also heard arguments in favour of shipping wine in bulk to major export markets such as the UK, for bottling at or near the port Ð in much the same way European wine was once sold into the UK for generations. Whether or not Australian makers agree that the benefits outweigh the risks involved is an interesting discussion, but one might suggest that a large-scale cooperative bottling plant near London or Southampton owned and operated by our larger wine exporters to the UK might one day become a reality.
