Vitis & Winemakers continue to thrive in Marlborough
Vitis & Winemakers are thrilled to have built a large presence in the heart of Marlborough’s wine industry. The company is enjoying the new expanded showroom and service footprint at its new premises in Herbert Street.
It might be a new name, but Vitis & Winemakers brings together two well-known local suppliers combining many years of industry experience across Australia and New Zealand. Two industry stalwarts previously named Australian & New Zealand Winemakers based in Australia and Vitis based in New Zealand have merged to become a single entity named Vitis & Winemakers.
Aside from providing innovative and quality equipment solutions to commercial wineries through their representation of Della Toffola, they now boast one of the broadest inventories across the region as a result of the merger, including equipment and technology for winery grape receival, fermentation, maturation and storage, oak products, filtration, pumps, distillation, cider, bottling, packaging and accessories and fittings.
Their dedicated administration, sales, tech and engineering teams consisting of over 35 staff, are based in all key wine regions across Australia and New Zealand, including their large premises in Marlborough.
Technicians Rick Alderlieste and Andrew Skelton with a CFKN Ceramic Cross ow Wine Filter, one of the many pieces of equipment available.
“The expansion into a larger premises has been a reflection of how well the team in Marlborough has been going,” says Managing director Paul Baggio.
“The support we have had from the Marlborough wine industry for Vitis & Winemakers has allowed us to take this step and create this big box format and stock our shelves with winemaking products.”
Paul says the company has great people on the ground both in Marlborough, Barossa and Melbourne offices.
“Good businesses come down to good people and we certainly have that in Marlborough.
“The industry, even with Covid, had been growing in New Zealand and it enabled the merger to happen organically.
“We were blessed that the wine industry was considered an essential service and the merger has been a positive experience.
Paul says the Herbert Street ware- house allows his company to move and evolve with the industry it serves.
“We’ve been doing a lot of re- search and development into new technologies and we’ve worked with winemakers to show how our equipment can be adapted to their winery processes.
“The move has enabled us to bring in more technologies and increase our workshop, and increase our plant machinery and a lot of that can be housed at our new facility.
“It also allows our techs to do onsite work, modi cations and that sort of thing for our clients.
“It’s allowed us to expand the investment in locally employed skilled personnel along with in- creasing the level of floor stock our clients know we will have options available from harvest to harvest,” Paul says.
“The new site defines us as the quintessential local service provider. “We want to show that we are as invested in Marlborough as our clients are.
This site doubles the footprint we had previously and we’ve had great feedback,” Paul says.
Team members Erin Keen and Kylie Potts provide innovative and quality solutions to the Marlbor- ough wine industry.
He says as a third-generation member of the wine industry, “I’ve seen what my father accomplished manufacturing presses and other equipment for the wine industry back through the 70’s and 80’s. Growing up in the wine industry working the factory floor, learnt that the industry can be very cyclical and being able to hold a greater level of spare parts off the floor just provides that extra confidence to our customers that we can deliver.
“It’s an industry that has a lot of history but it’s an agricultural industry and innovation is constant, technology is always advancing, especially true for export led industries as the wine industry.”
To have such a dynamic invested presence by Della Toffola across New Zealand, particularly in Marlborough has been immensely important.
“Marlborough has always been innovative as it tries to make its mark on the world stage. Vitis & Winemakers along with Della Toffola and our local engineering technical support team are making a very visible partnership with the local winemaking fraternity to see that global success story grow from strength to strength”
Paul says scaling wine production in Marlborough, managing grape yields whilst maintaining quality, Finding greater pools of skilled labour are just some of the challenges that the local industry has been focused on, without raising the ire that the industry must manage the threat of climate change and the impact to Sauvignon Blanc moving forward.
“There’s no better prism than the wine industry to see that the effects of climate change are real and like everything, we will have to adapt and evolve with it.”
*This article first appeared in The Sun -September 2021