WINE AUSTRALIA: DIRECTIONS TO 2025
AN INDUSTRY STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS

MAY 2007

CHAIRMAN’S

In 1996, the Australian wine sector published Strategy 2025 - a landmark document that created a new unity and purpose. The key target set was for Australian wine to achieve annual sales of $4.5 billion by the year 2025. This figure was actually surpassed in 2005, 20 years early. Australian wine is now expected to reach $5 billion in sales by the end of June 2007. Today, after a decade of unprecedented change in global wine trading conditions, we need to reassess the priorities and challenges facing Australian wine, most of which were anticipated in Strategy 2025. As a self-reliant sector that drives its own destiny, we must continue to react and adapt to changing market needs and conditions. Through the past decade, Australian wine has become subject to a significantly more competitive global trading environment, has been confronted by an imbalance between its supply and its demand, and has run up hard against the realities of climate change and scarcity of irrigation water. Against these, the sector has worked diligently to meet the demanding expectations of its major international markets, and has seen the value per litre of its export and domestic sales decline in a dramatically altered market environment. The product of 18 months of intense research and consultation, Directions to 2025 clarifies the environment in which Australia is making and trading its wine. It sets a measurable course for the future, maintaining the vision behind Strategy 2025 and its unprecedented success. Strategy 2025 called for value growth between 2002 and 2015 and Directions answers that call.

IDENTIFYING THE CHALLENGE Directions to 2025 is every bit as ambitious as Strategy 2025. Founded on the firm conviction that Australia must become a more significant participant in the regionally distinct and fine wine market, its target is to increase the value of the Australian