Dexion and Wineworks keep the wine industry flowing

It was a nice problem for a company to have – business was too good. Wineworks, New Zealand's largest contract wine-bottler, was experiencing huge growth. In late 2007, global and domestic demand for New Zealand wines was booming, and exports were growing at a compound rate of 25 percent each year.

In the valleys of Marlborough, famous for its sauvignon blanc, the amount of land under grape had tripled in size over five years to nearly 16,000 hectares. Wineworks' plant in Blenheim, the hub of the Marlborough wine-growing district, had for many years been bottling, storing and distributing wine for an eclectic range of local winemakers, from single vineyards to multinationals. Then suddenly it found itself filled to the brim.
"For years we had been stacking the pallets in the aisles, piling it high, and then having to spend hours digging out that elusive last pallet," says Wineworks managing director, Tim Nowell-Usticke.

Dexion was contracted to help Wineworks and their clients find a way forward. A greenfield solution wasn't possible – Wineworks was committed to the site, as many clients had built storage tanks nearby and piped directly into the plant, so it was necessary to keep the plant operational during construction. Grapes, it seems, don't stop growing because there's a plant to build.

There also had to be great flexibility in the new system. "We do everything, from sending a single case to a local restaurant, to filling a container and dispatching it to the US," explains Anthony Barnes, Wineworks' warehouse and distribution manager. "It's a very volatile business. We never know exactly how busy we'll be tomorrow. If an exchange rate moves the right way, or if a celebrity chef on European TV says how much he likes one of our client's wines, we can very easily find ourselves suddenly pulling double shifts.