Australian Vintage looks for capital as Accolade talks fall over

Australian Vintage has gone into a trading halt, requested its shares be suspended while it finalises a “proposed capital raising, debt refinancing and trading update”, and revealed Accolade Wines walked away from merger talks on 22 May.

The company told the ASX it expects to announce its proposed plan to raise capital and refinance debt “on or around 11 June”.

It told the ASX that it expects its debt at 30 June to be around $70-75 million when its guidance to the market was $43-50 million.

There was also $15 million of existing bank capacity that was due to expire at the end of July, which would reduce its bank capacity and overdraft facilities to around $78 million.

“Given expected working capital requirements in Q1 FY25, Australian Vintage believes that commencing trading would be materially prejudicial to its ability to source additional capital which is critical to support its continued financial viability and operations,” its statement to the ASX said.

Accolade Wines – acquired by consortium led by Bain Capital in February – had been in discussions with Australian Vintage since 26 February. They had completed two-way diligence and moved on to more detailed diligence and commercial terms.

Australian Vintage said the news from Accolade followed the AGM of the CCW Co-operative on 21 May, which had voted down the special resolution to restructure Accolade’s largest grape supply contract. 

At the beginning of May, Australian Vintage CEO, Craig Garvin’s, tenure was terminated for conduct that “displayed a lack of judgement and was inconsistent with the values of the company and the high standards expected of its CEO”.

Garvin told The Australian Financial Review he was considering legal options.