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- Western Cape wine producers have 289 million liters of wine that they would not be able to sell due to closure regulations.
- This is causing complications in storing the current crop.
- The livelihoods of smaller producers and hundreds of thousands of industry workers are at stake if wine sales are not reopened, according to the province’s Department of Agriculture.
Western Cape wine producers have 289 million liters of wine that they would not be able to sell due to lockdown regulations, according to the province’s Department of Agriculture.
This was causing complications in storing the current crop because there was not enough space and it was feared that the stock could end up in a criminal parallel market.
The livelihoods of smaller producers and hundreds of thousands of workers in the industry are at stake if wine sales are not reopened, the department said.
The department’s Dirk Troskie said growers’ profits were low even before the Covid-19 pandemic, and that if restrictions were not eased, hundreds of growers and their employees would be ruined.
He said that regardless of how they cut it, the industry was in trouble deciding whether to dispose of the products, which would be a risk to the environment and society, or convert them to other products such as hand sanitizer, spirits from industrial grape or wine, at a loss.
He said producers had a beginning and an end to 2020, with the Disaster Management Act permutations of when wine could and could not be sold or transported, changing multiple times.
Western Cape Agriculture MEC Ivan Meyer said he had visited a producer, where the owner had told him that they had received an order for 300,000 bottles last year from a large retailer.
However, on the same day, his hopes were dashed when the alcohol ban was announced.
Hundreds of thousands of people trust the work that the wine industry brings them, from seasonal workers to transporters and bottlers.
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He supported Prime Minister Alan Winde’s earlier call, in a letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa, for restrictions on alcohol sales to be changed to save the wine industry.
Winde’s proposal is that alcohol be sold Monday through Thursday at points of sale, that the curfew be extended until 11:00 p.m. to allow restaurants to serve until 10:00 p.m., and that wine estates can serve wine and offer tastings again.
Winde said that Covid-19 cases in the province were on the decline again as the second wave passed, and that the situation had changed since calling for a 14-day alcohol sales restriction in early January, when the number cases was high.
Winde said the Western Cape had the capacity to cope with the number of Covid-19 cases and needed to get the economy back on track to save livelihoods.
Ramaphosa has acknowledged receipt of Winde’s letter.
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