You can’t keep Pipers Brook out of the news. This company, which is these days by far the largest and most successful in Tasmania, began when Dr Andrew Pirie and his brother David planted 6 ha of vines in 1974 on a loan of $20,000. Today the enterprise, having recently added Heemskerk and Rochecombe to its list of assets, is worth around $25 million. To fund these acquisitions the company issued a 1-for-5 rights issue and an extra 900,000 shares, all at $1.90 per share. These shares are now trading between $2.10 and $2.30. On July 2, with 200 ha under vine in ten separate vineyards and a total production of around 1500 tonnes, Pipers Brook will list on the Australian Stock Exchange. According to Andrew Pirie, the purpose of the listing is to make the 12.2 million $1 par shares easier to trade, rather than to seek capital for future development. The company’s capital development has been funded by a relatively small number of shareholders, including Andrew Pirie and his wife Sabrina, who presently own 16% of its value. An incentive for potential shareholders is an offer of 40% discount on purchases of Pipers Brook brands. Andrew Pirie suggests that the decision to go public was in large part a reaction to his company’s changed circumstances, especially when the Heemskerk and Rochecombe purchases were considered. He recognises the potential pitfalls in exposing the business to the market, exposing it to the threat of takeovers, but says that the float delivers a commitment by Pipers Brook to deliver what it has set out to produce. Pipers Brook is as modernised as any Australian wine business. Fully computerised, the winery can be operated by Andrew Pirie from anywhere in the world as long as he can connect his laptop computer to base via a digital phone or landline to check on weather reports, soil moisture conditions and fermentation temperatures. Although he’s unable to control the weather, he can directly influence the latter variables via the computer. ‘Our winery is the bees’ knees as far as a facility is concerned for premium wine making’, says Pirie. ‘We’ve an underground cellar with space for 1500 barrels on racks and all of those things which make the job easier and better.’ ‘It’s fair to say we have laid a firm base and have been doing if for a while’, says Pirie. ‘It surprises people that things have changed so much. If people thought they knew what Pipers Brook was like, they probably don’t now. It’s changed so much, not so much scale but in sophistication. The work we’ve put in over the last 10 years is starting to pop out of the ground.’ ‘It’s taken twenty years for us to learn exactly what to grow and where in a new wine region. We’ve found that the Alsace varieties of riesling, gewurztraminer and pinot gris do very well in the Pipers Brook area and that the Champagne varieties of pinot noir and chardonnay create excellent sparkling bases on the later maturing eastern slopes here. We’ve discovered that we should continue to grow chardonnay for table wines on the best sites in Pipers area, but that we should go to the Tamar for the red Bordeaux varieties and sauvignon blanc.’ It’s undeniable at present that the present boom in Australian wine exports has led to a significant number of opportunities for people to invest in the wine industry. Several of these opportunities are based on sound business sense and base their projected returns on sensible, realistic outcomes, but there are plenty that do not. Pipers Brook is a successful business which has doubled its national market every year in the 1990s and is managed by people with a sound track record in the wine industry. I would suggest that any potential investor in wine take the Pipers Brook float very seriously. Says Andrew Pirie: ‘We’ve learned what we’re here for and now we’re doing it with gay abandon.’
