Procurement practices in the Australian wine industry

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of an investigation of procurement practices in the Australian wine industry. This research found that the importance of procurement strategy was not foremost in the minds of senior management in the Australian wine industry. A number of weaknesses in the procurement practices of the industry were identified, which included a lack of strategic direction conducive to effective procurement practices and a lack of standard procurement procedures. Large wine producers were found to be the most frequent users of both formal procurement planning and ‘make or buy’ analyses, which were infrequently used by the medium and small wine producers. The research participants ranked “ensure highest quality inputs were made available to winery”, “meet the planned production needs of the winery”, “minimise the costs of inputs purchased for the winery” and “ensure the dependability of the supplier chosen” as the most important procurement strategies.