AUS: Foreign investment nothing new for winemakers

(ABC) - Foreign investment isn't anything new for Australia's wine industry, and the major winemaking representative group says it doesn't rate as a big concern.

From the big brands to family run vineyards, deals are happening all the time and no one seems too fussed about it.

"Foreign investment has been a part of the Australian wine industry for at least 50 years," says Toby Langley, a director at the specialist wine brokerage firm Gaetjen Langley, based in Adelaide.

He says for an industry that for many years now has been plagued by low profitability and oversupply, foreign capital is a revitalising force in the industry.

"At a smaller level we're seeing investors coming in who are more positive about the industries future and are prepared to pay a higher price than the locals for strategic assets. This is allowing small businesses and proprietors to retire and do other things.

"At a higher level or a larger scale we're seeing new markets being opened by foreign investors and we're seeing improvements to properties.

"We're seeing developments to wineries we're seeing introductions of new technologies and we're seeing capital injected into an industry that unfortunately has been starved of it in recent years."
Overseas buyer helps expansion

When American company Jackson Family Wines bought the land in 2000, the Yangarra winery was a contract vineyard in South Australia's McLaren Vale, just south of Adelaide.

It's now one of the state's largest biodynamic wineries with new processing facilities and a cellar door on site.

Yangarra's general manager and winemaker Peter Fraser says foreign capital has been the key to the winery's growth.