Technical Support

The regulation of wine around the world has a significant real and potential impact on the Australian wine industry. The past decade has seen unprecedented growth in the international trade in wine and serious impediments to trade arise from differences in regulatory philosophies for wine around the world.

A number of areas of trade barriers are proliferating at present and appear to be part of a well orchestrated trade policy push from some major world players. These relate to consumer protection / fair trade and principally relate to product integrity systems, additives and processes and labelling.

WFA works closely with the Australian Wine & Brandy Corporation to develop a regulatory regime that provides consumer protection without removing a winemaker’s freedom to innovate. There is a very close synergy between compliance and broad market access issues and this creates an important nexus; dealing with market access issues relies on a close relationship with the compliance structure.

In addition, WFA’s Technical Committee:

• provides technical input on wine production to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ)
• provides technical input into international fora, including the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the OIV
• assesses technical requirements of trading partners and provides advice to WFA on liberalising these requirements.

Who do I contact?
Tony Battaglene
Director, Strategy & International Affairs
Telephone: 02 6239 8300
Email: tony@wfa.org.au