The wine brand's new owners are taking certain operations offshore and looking at outsourcing others
Manufacturing work at the remains of Villa Maria Estate in Māngere is being outsourced to the UK by the wine brand's new owner in a move that has employees expecting mass redundancies.
Founded by Sir George Fistonich, Villa Maria was bought out of receivership by Indevin in late 2021 with NZX-listed property company Goodman buying 31 hectares of bare land including the property’s vineyard.
Villa Maria is the largest New Zealand wine brand in the United Kingdom/Ireland and Indevin, originally a contract winemaker, wants to capitalise on that by moving the bottling of its UK-destined wines to Britain from early 2024.
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A Villa Maria/Indevin employee said this constituted 50 percent of bottling work at the facility and said there were discussions taking place about outsourcing the remainder of the bottling work to a third party.
“They have not discussed culling staff and say this is all being reviewed with no real answers, but we know what it means when workload is decreased - casualties increase.
“Credible people who have been in the business for a long time say that the top bosses know their decision but are now slowly feeding staff this news in line for the big redundancy news.”
That employee believed it ultimately came down to cutting costs.
Indevin chief executive Duncan McFarlane said people were the company’s number one priority. “We are committed to providing as much support and information as possible for our staff at this time. As part of our review process, we are working with all staff on all possible options.”
He said moving bottling closer to its target market unlocked a range of benefits, though mainly a lower carbon footprint.
Wine produced at its Hawkes Bay and Marlborough vineyards will be shipped in bulk containers rather than individual bottles, significantly decreasing weight and size of its cargo.
McFarlane said it was reviewing the remainder of the wine bottled in Māngere with stakeholders and staff, with one of the options being a relocation to a new bottling site in Auckland.
“Consequently, due to these changes, Indevin is currently reviewing its operations and considering the suitability of its Māngere site for our future operations.”
The finance, administration and sales staff working from the estate are moving to a new office in Newmarket in the coming week.
The Villa Maria facility sites smack bang in the middle of the site where Goodman is building a new business park and the property trust would likely look to snap it up if the opportunity came.
Neither party would comment on whether discussions were taking place around a potential sale and purchase of the winery.
'Extremely disappointed'
Sir George Fistonich said he was “extremely disappointed, not least for the many loyal staff” that operations were being outsourced.
“Villa Maria was a family business and this action decimates the NZ family of employees.
“This is also a blow to the NZ wine industry as well as NZ Trade and Enterprise, which used this venue in marketing New Zealand businesses to the world.”
He said by shipping the raw product overseas, Indevin was turning Villa Maria into a commodity wine producer. “That does nothing for the NZ wine industry and only serves to line the pockets of Indevin.”
“I spent 25 years establishing the current Villa Maria site at Māngere, buying up land and developing a world-class asset that produced award-winning wine. I worked closely with the likes of Tourism NZ and NZTE to promote NZ industry.
“When I was advised about Indevin’s plans, that it will see significant job losses, I felt the pain of my former staff and colleagues. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about the people and the business that was Villa Maria.”
The receivership sale of the Villa Maria business and land has been hotly contested in court by Sir George Fistonich and he believes this latest action further vindicates his decision to take the matter to court.
He had a legal setback early on in failing to stop the Calibre Partners receivers from retaining $5.1m from surplus distributions to defend any legal action, but Fistonich plans to take ANZ and Rabobank to court over actions leading to the sale of the business at what he believes was a substantial undervalue.
