Introduction
Part
1 Bulk Wine Imports
Bulk wine importing is a very unglamorous name for what is essentially a key ingredient in producing quality wines at a cheap price. Bulk wine is wine that is shipped not in its bottle, but in some form of tank, and bottled in the destination country. It can be for cheap un-branded wine or for big brands that need to move large quantities of wine. There are three issues associated with importing wine - quality control, environmental issues and costs.
Cost is the reason much wine is bulk imported. When shipping wine from Australia to the UK or America, there are three options. The wine could be bottled at source and flown. It can be bottled at source and packed into a container and shipped. Or, the wine can be poured into a flexible tank (Flexitank) inside a container and bottled at destination.
Flying wine around the world is both environmentally and economically unacceptable. The only wines flown these days are usually samples for big wine buyers!
Bottling at source and packing into a container to be shipped is very common. The volume of a typical case of 12 bottles of wine is 34x25x30cm or 0.0255M cubed. This is equivalent to a decent 25.5L of volume. But remember a case of 12 bottles only holds 9L of wine. So there is huge waste in volume when shipping by sea if the wine is pre bottled. In real life a standard container can hold between 12,000 and 13,000 bottles depending on bottle size and packing method. However using a standard flexi tank the equivalent of 32,000 bottles of wine can be shipped. This is a huge improvement in cost as most sea freight is calculated on the volume shipped not the weight.
It is not just volume that is being saved. The liquid in a bottle of wine is approximately 750g. With a bottle weighing between 300 and 500g, the weight of the bottle accounts for between 29% and 40% of the final wine weight. So even shipping by road, where the weight as well as volume can be an important factor, bulk importing has significant advantages.
More shipped for the same costs can give a significant improvement in costs, but from an environmental point of view it can have significant advantages. The less shipping means that less CO2 is required. According to the Waste and Resource Action Program (WRAP) shipping a wine from Australia in bulk and bottling in the UK versus shipping a bottled wine saves 137g of carbon (using a 400g bottle). This may not sound like much until you consider Constellation Europe, the owners of Stowells, Echo Falls and Kumala, imported 55 million bottles, and was getting ready to double this during 2009. Other large UK bottlers include Corby Bottlers, who bottle 5.4 million 75cl bottles, and Kingsland Wines and Spirit who bottle 8.3 million bottles for the Co-op and a whopping 54 million bottles for Tesco. In total 199 million bottles of wine are bottled from bulk imports. These are big numbers and make a meaningful difference. For Australia 20% of wine is bulk imported saving 11,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. But according to WRAP by using lightweight bottles this could be increased to 122,500 tonnes.
Saving of CO2 is not the only benefit. In the UK where we have natural use for green glass, importing by bulk reduces the amount of waste glass imported into the country and provides a use for the glass that is here. It also reduces waste and improves the recyclability of green glass in the UK.
In many wine circles the idea of bulk wine importing is frowned upon. Wines bulk imported are perceived as cheap, and this is true. Cheap wines below £6 are the backbone of the UK wine economy and have the economies of scale to warrant increased logistics required to achieve the savings. If an artisan is making 20,000 bottles of a wine, this would not even fill a flexitank and would not warrant the extra logistics of bulk importing. In addition many winemakers worry about importing wines by bulk as they are not there to supervise the bottling and lose a level of control. For expensive wine this is not acceptable for the producer, however there are some advantages to bulk importing from a quality perspective.
Wines shipped in bulk have more wine in the tank and as such experience slower thermal changes and less risk of damage from excessive heating as many experience crossing the equator. Wines that are made for immediate drinking have a short shelf life, as such bottling closer to the point of drinking means that the wine is likely to be fresher and in better condition, especially if closed with a plastic cork, where shelf life is only 6 to 18 months.
Bulk importing also gives shippers the opportunity to adapt the packaging of the wines to respond to the market more quickly. Perhaps a modified label showing a promotion, or an extra sticker for a recent award, all can be added months later if the wine was bottled at source then shipped.
In conclusion bulk importing of wine is an excellent way of shipping large quantities of wine that make up the low to medium priced wines, it is cheaper and more environmentally friendly. It also gives greater flexibility for packaging.
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