Top 100 CEO Interviews
Issue No. 41 - June/July 2008
Barossa Valley Estate turns around
Achieving a $2 million turnaround at the helm of a well-established but underperforming Barossa Valley wine enterprise has added to GM Christine Hahn’s wine industry laurels.
Barossa Valley Estate was the smallest firm to make the Top 100 SA Company Index last year and could well rise this year as structural changes take effect.
Barossa Valley Estate was established in 1984 as the winemaking enterprise of a grapegrowing cooperative. BVE became a public company in 1999, 50% owned by the original founding grape growers and 50% owned by Hardy Wine Company Limited, which is now part of the Constellation Brands Group.
Christine joined BVE in 2003 as Finance Manager and became GM in December 2004. She brought deep corporate experience to the position, having worked for Faulding, Santos, merchant bank Manufacturers
Hanover and Touche Ross in roles covering mergers
and acquisitions, finance and a broad range of
commercial issues.
“My previous wine industry exposure includes our family vineyard of 50 acres in the Barossa Valley that my husband and I took over in 1999. It has been owned and managed by my husband’s family for four generations,” Christine says.
Once at the helm of BVE, she immediately addressed its primary problem: BVE was holding too much finished wine of the wrong type, a reflection of purchasing policy that was skewed towards supply rather than demand.
Addressing that problem was the big issue in 2006-07, but the small team also managed to launch new brands E Minor and E Bass in the domestic market, and commit E Minor to export. BVE turned a loss of $1,897,173 in 2006 into a profit after tax of $51,920 in 2007 – an improvement of $1,949,093.
“The 2007 result is very pleasing after the hard work in 2006 in clearing surplus stocks,” Christine says.
“We can now concentrate on selling our branded wines – the internationally acclaimed E&E Black Pepper Shiraz and Ebenezer...
