About Us
Wine Industry suppliers are critical to the future of the Australian wine industry. The services, products and processes that grape and wine companies need all come from suppliers. Globalisation and competition means that grape and wine companies are leaner than they have ever been and are becoming leaner. This increases their reliance on product, process and service providers for new ideas, R&D, quality control, environmental performance, and inventory management to name just a few areas of change.
Over the last few years, we have seen significant changes in the industry's approach to suppliers, supported by the activities of WISA and our partners. We are now part of the industry at a strategy level, with representation on the Premiers Wine Council and the Wine Industry Strategic Directions Group with an increasing level of consultation from wine industry organisations. In the last 12 months we have partnered effectively with sponsors to develop the WISA WOW Award at the WineTech tradeshow and the Supplier of The Year Awards, both of which were fantastic successes and give a strong platform to build profile for the efforts of suppliers in meeting and exceeding the needs of their customers. I am experiencing an increasing sense of partnership between the supplier community and grape and wine producers.
WISA's approach to exports has continued to grow from strength to strength with success in getting stand 14 for WISA at the Unified Symposium in Sacramento and the current WISA stand at SITEVI. This is the first time we have had a stand at Unified in our own right, after a long period of trying to obtain one of these hard to get stands. As a primary point of contact we also use events like SITEVI and the Unified Symposium to act as a conduit between companies seeking agents in Australia and members who may be able to assist.
As an association, we need to meet the needs of our members effectively and look forward to hearing your feedback on how we can better serve you. In the coming year we are planning on strengthening knowledge sharing within the supplier sector, which we started in 2007 with a seminar by some of the most open innovative firms and another on environmental issues. We will also be looking carefully at our program between our very successful WineTech events to effectively meet the needs of members.
I am looking forward to settling in as Chairman and working with the new committee and our sub-committees to continue to meet the needs of suppliers in times of considerable change, risk and opportunity within the wine industry.
Dr Darren Oemcke
Chair