The South African wine industry loses about 100 small farmers and 1,000ha of vineyards each year, though better yields have helped it achieve record export and production, an industry body says.
Thanks partly to South African producers filling the gap created by Europe’s poor 2013 harvest, exports last year jumped 26% over the previous high achieved in 2012.
Siobhan Thompson, CEO of export-promotion body Wines of South Africa (Wosa), said there was a "wave of optimism" in the international market about South African wines. Exports had risen from 22-million litres when the international market was opened to South Africa in 1992, to more than 500-million litres a year now.
Rico Basson, CEO of wine producers’ organisation VinPro, said on Tuesday the diminishing area dedicated to wine farming was the result of small producers shifting to other agricultural commodities.
They were also selling their farms to larger producers. He said larger producers had better economies of scale and were more productive.
VinPro is forming a strategy to improve producers’ margins and defragment the industry, he said.
Mr Basson said VinPro aimed to have a "strategic framework" by December, which would focus on issues including improving the industry’s logistics, using technology more efficiently, and working more closely with the broader food industry, and government and labour.
While yields could be improved further, the industry needed to reinvest in vineyards at a rate of about 5,000ha a year, he said.
South Africa’s nearly 100,000ha of vineyards generates about 3% of the world’s wine production, making it one of the 10 largest producers.
Mr Basson said efforts to increase exports included working towards free trade agreements, and repositioning South African wines.
