Blueprint for local wine industry unveiled

A critical report into the impacts of the wine industry on the Limestone Coast has been unveiled with University of Queensland’s Dr Jonathon Staggs releasing the blueprint at an industry event in Mount Gambier last week.

An expert on institutions, regions, and entrepreneurship, Staggs was commissioned by the Limestone Coast Grape and Wine Council to research the topic and produce the report, which centred on the wine industry’s broad benefits for the Limestone Coast community

Now launched and available for the public to read, Staggs’s report, ‘A Region of Value: Strengthening the Grape and Wine Future of the Limestone Coast’, provides clear advocacy and novel recommendations to strengthen the industry’s profile and future development.

“The overarching strategic question is how the Limestone Coast will continue to be a ‘region of value’ when it is at the mercy of market dynamics, compounded with geo-political headwinds that are very much outside out of the control of farm and wine business owners,” Dr Staggs said.

While arguing that the Limestone Coast wine industry is peculiarly well situated to appeal to a new generation of wine-curious or wine consumers, Staggs also argues for the importance of ‘a new generation of artisan entrepreneurs’ to entertain ‘social media audiences’ and ‘new hedonic tourists’.

Staggs identified the need to focus on long-term knowledge sharing, in order to build up a pipeline of skilled workers and future leaders to shore up the future of the region.

“By nurturing next-generation talent and entrepreneurial capacity, the region can make careers in grape and wine—along with connected sectors—more attractive and secure,” Dr Staggs said.

The presentation and discussion took place at the Wulanda Convention Centre in Mount Gambier. It was chaired by Dr Edward Cavanagh of the Limestone Coast Grape and Wine Council.

The event was attended by mayors and local government officials from across the Limestone Coast, along with a number of state government public servants.

Representatives of several regional wine associations, including Mount Gambier, Coonawarra, and Wrattonbully, made the journey to attend.

Despite this strong turnout, Cavanagh lamented that representation from wine industry bodies and statutory wine entities at both the state and the national levels was negligible.

“Our distance from Adelaide makes it more difficult for us to attract not only the transient wine tourists of Australia, but also the delegates even from those institutions that genuinely have our best interests at heart,” Mr Cavanagh said.

“Our door is always wide open here at the Limestone Coast. And this report proves just how important it is to keep it open – and, more than that, how important it is for all of us, collaboratively, to turn things around for ourselves.

“Nobody in Canberra or Adelaide is going to help us to do that on the ground. It all starts here in Mount Gambier.”

A copy of the report can be found at this address: A Region of Value – Limestone Coast Grape and Wine Council Inc.