Do we really need Chilean red grape juice?
Huon Hooke in Opinions Become a member to view this article
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Just Juice uses imported ingredients for its apple juice and orange juice. Huon Hooke
There are 400 million litres of red wine in tanks around Australia, we are told. Hundreds of hectares of red grapevines have been left unharvested in the last couple of vintages. So why are Bickford’s importing red grapejuice from Chile?
For the same reason Just Juice uses imported ingredients for its apple juice and orange juice, I suppose. Economics. It’s apparently cheaper to bring juice concentrate in from afar than to buy the local produce.
Last time I looked, we were growing plenty of apples and oranges in Australia. Certainly, grapes, apples and oranges are seasonal, but there are ways to store juice so that it can be packaged and sold when those fruits are out of season locally.
It’s a special kind of logic, to import red grape juice when we have grapegrowers going out of business because there’s no market for their grapes. According to Peter Bailey of Wine Australia, reported in Good Weekend magazine (9/11/24), the surplus of red wine in Australia leading into the 2024 vintage was about 400 million litres.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this is the country that exports its natural gas by the shipload to other countries while we are told the rising price of gas at home is because there’s a shortage of it.
I asked Bickford’s a series of questions, which the following didn’t answer satisfactorily, but I quote it here in the interests of fairness.
The Bickford’s back label. Huon Hooke
“With the significant volume of juice products we produce each year, our supply chain team takes into account a number of factors when sourcing our raw ingredients. These include quality, consistency, locality, availability, pricing, attributes, favour profile, storage considerations, freshness of product and others depending on the ingredient type. We have a large number of local suppliers, many of whom we have long-term relationships with, and a number where we are a significant customer to their business. We also own and operate a pomegranate farm in Wanbi, South Australia for use in our Bickford’s Pomegranate Juice.
“In the instance of our Bickford’s Red Grape Juice, our team has for the present, elected to obtain the grape concentrate from Chile having weighed up the factors I have mentioned above. As part of our ongoing supply chain best practice processes, we will continue to review available options to ensure we provide our valued consumers with quality products at the right price.”
(Signed by Beverley Reeves, marketing manager, non-liquor)