Brown Brothers paying for fruit it doesn't take

PaulS · Post by **PaulS** » Tue May 24, 2005 8:55 am

Here's one I found interesting. Brown Brothers is reportedly paying some of its contracted growers to leave fruit on the vine or drop it on the ground. The figure of $800 a tonne is what has been quoted. A Browns spokeswoman has said the company would rather pay out its suppliers than go to the trouble of processing and storing wine it doesn't think it can sell. Now I'd like to see a few other companies following their lead...

smithy · Post by **smithy** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:15 am

Whats surprising here?
We have these people in Australia who enforce contracts---Theyr'e called lawyers and are very frightening people if you cross them.
So Beige Bros are full up...again not surprising, but they still have to pay for contracted grapes, its called honoring their contracts.

Perhaps the question you should be asking is "how did they treat their growers without written ironclad contracts?".

We pay our uncontracted growers way above market price as we have a handshake agreement that neither party will break. Brown's left my little mate in the lurch with very little notice to place his fruit elsewhere.

Growers don't forget being treated poorly any less than anyone else.
Cheers
Smithy

PaulS · Post by **PaulS** » Wed May 25, 2005 11:35 am

So do all wineries honour their contracts?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed May 25, 2005 12:16 pm

Paul

Gee I hope so,
But a lot of them are trying to weasel out of them, quoting Insuffecient quality, out of spec etc.

Cheers
Smithy

marsalla · Post by **marsalla** » Wed May 25, 2005 5:28 pm

Oh yeah, its always the big nasty wine company who reneges on deals. Its funny, when things were booming I can recall instances of growers reneging on deals struck, but there was never any mention made on the country hour about it; the wine companies just got on with it. However wine companies have long memories at times also.

Also, dont assume that it is whole blocks that are left unharvested, it can be OVER contracted fruit, that is the grower has grown moree than his contract allows. In the past when everyone was chasing fruit it was easy to place this fruit, but now its getting harder.

Is a wine company obliged to buy fruit without a contract in order to make wine it cant sell. No, the wine company must look out for itself. I dont recall any growers 5 years ago saying that fruit prices were to high, how about you reduce your price so you can make a return on your investment.

cheers

707 · Post by **707** » Thu May 26, 2005 9:00 am

What we're seeing now is just another pendulum swing, this time it's in the wineries favour, a few years back it was in the growers favour as prices soared.

It would be nice for all if prices stayed relatively stable rather than booming and busting.

Last year one of the big four just ignored contracts and refused to take or pay for fruit. Not sure there was ever any successful work done by the lawyers on growers behalf or maybe the written word wasn't as watertight as the growers would have liked.