In response to the sector challenges laid out in 2024’s One Grape & Wine Sector Plan, Wine Australia has created the Australian Wine Future Fund, designed to increase funding pathways for fast-tracking innovations addressing the industry’s most critical challenges.
The funding will come through two streams – a Research & Innovation Fund, and a Venture Investments Portfolio.
Wine Australia CEO, Dr Martin Cole, said the Australian Wine Future Fund builds on existing research and innovation strategies.
“The grape and wine levy system for research and innovation is tied to the size of our sector’s production. It rises and falls with the size of the crush each year. The changes to the available government matching enables Wine Australia to actively seek non-levy funding opportunities,” said Cole.
“For research partners contributing funding, the additional income helps grow the scale and impact of innovation. It also provides a mechanism that allows the sector’s levies to go further, in more areas along the value chain. The Australian Wine Future Fund is working to future-proof investments that deliver tangible impact where it is most needed in response to challenges facing grapegrowers, winemakers and wine businesses.”
Research & Innovation Fund
Building on Wine Australia’s investment priorities in the Wine Australia Strategic Plan 2025-30, the Research & Innovation Fund’s co-investment model works in partnership with research organisations, private sector, state governments and industry representative associations. These investments will complement – not replace – existing levy‑funded research.
The fund has a target of $35 million over five years, through external grants and partner co-investment, funding co‑designed projects that deliver practical outcomes for vineyard performance, product innovation, sustainability and production efficiency.
“Already this financial year, $4.77 million of additional co-investment in research has been unlocked through the Research & Innovation Fund mechanism. This is enabling transformational research, commercialisation and capability‑building through extension and adoption that directly address the sector’s challenges and opportunities,” said Cole.
The organisation stated the model is actively supporting sector growth, including working with Australian Grape & Wine and the Australian Wine Research Institute to co-invest membership fees towards efficiency improvements and future-proofing the program.
The fund is also improving the environmental sustainability, profitability and competitiveness of the Western Australia wine industry through co-investment with Wines of Western Australia and the Western Australia Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.
A further 10 research projects have received additional support through the Research & Innovation Fund, including with Agriculture Victoria, La Trobe University, amaea Limited, Best’s Wines and Agri Automation, Farmers2Founders, and the Australian Wine Research Institute.
The Research & Innovation Fund is also intentionally pursuing strategically aligned grants, including the recently announced Australian Economic Accelerator: Ignite Grant to Queensland University of Technology to develop sensors capable of detecting smoke taint in winegrapes before fermentation, and the Business Research and Innovation Initiative (BRII) towards carbon-footprint-reducing alternative packaging.
Venture Investments Portfolio
Wine Australia has partnered with agri-food investment and insights platform, Tenacious Ventures, to find and support companies building impactful solutions. Under the Venture Investments Portfolio, Wine Australia will invest $2.5 million of non-levy funds alongside Tenacious Ventures’ existing funds and other investors, towards a combined target of $15 million over 5 years.
The portfolio will back early-stage, high-quality, technology-driven companies with the potential to transform viticulture and wine production and strengthen the long-term resilience of the Australian grape and wine sector.
Investments in companies may include sensors, robotics, advanced production systems, software and data systems, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and biosecurity technologies and others – particularly where the innovations create a defensible market advantage and deliver measurable environmental and sector benefit.
Wine Australia will maintain autonomy of investments, to ensure they align with industry priorities and impact objectives, aiming to embed sustainability and capability building at the core of operations.
Tenacious Ventures founding partner, Matthew Pryor, said as a company dedicated to driving impactful change in agri-food from the outset, the team was delighted to strengthen its long-running collaboration with Wine Australia through the Australian Wine Future Fund.
“Wine Australia understands that new models of identifying, supporting and scaling up sector benefits are needed, and we are looking forward to working closely with them to catalyse investment into solutions that will deliver sector benefit,” said Pryor.
For further information, head to wineaustralia.com.
