Sirromet says China still thirsty for Australian wine

SIRROMET Wines is continuing to sell a lot of wine to China despite increasingly chilly relations between Canberra and Beijing.

Sirromet's Business Development Manager for China, Eric Yu, with a glass of red wine in the vineyard. Picture Peter Wallis

GOOD DROP

NICE to see Sirromet Wines is still selling loads of the good stuff to its Chinese customers despite increasingly sour relations between Canberra and Beijing. Sirromet general manager Rod Hill tells your diarist that the company last month sent a team to Hong Kong’s Vinexpo, one of the biggest wine and spirits trade shows in the world, and the feedback was largely positive about Australian wines. In fact this year, Australia headlined the 20th anniversary event as ‘Country of Honour.’

Hill says Mt Cotton-based Sirromet was part of the Australian display at Vinexpo, which featured 1465 exhibitors from 50 countries. There has been concern that the billon-dollar wine export market to China could be under threat, with some of the larger wineries complaining that product was being delayed at Chinese ports. But Hill says Sirromet has not noticed any difficulties so far. He says that could be because it ships most of its product direct to consumers rather than to wholesalers. Sales to China have doubled in the last five years.

Sirromet employs Eric Yu as its business development manager for China.

THE GIVING CREED

HE may head US fast food giant Yum Brands! these days but Greg Creed has not forgotten about his old alma mater of QUT. Creed has just given a million dollars to the university, including the QUT Learning Potential Fund that aims to help disadvantaged students.

The generous gift came about as part of QUT Giving Day last month to raise funds for the university. The target for the day was to get 500 donors and we hear Creed pledged that if that total was reached he would personally donate $500,000. With advance publicity about Giving Day, that target was reached before the event officially got underway. Creed then stepped in and said if $1million was donated by midnight he would donate another $500,000 – and that occurred. In total more than $1.6 million was raised on the day.

RETURN TO SENDER

AUSTRALIA Post promises to always deliver, but for a group of disgruntled ex-franchisees of the government-owned company that is a bit of a joke.

The franchisees, who appeared before last week’s parliamentary inquiry into franchising, say they were sold a pup because Australia Post promised a 150 shop network of franchisees backed by the resources of a major government organisation.

What they weren’t told was that Australia Post were being pressured by the powerful postal union not to extend the franchise network at the expense of company-owned outlets because of fears of job losses. Australia Post eventually pulled the plug on the franchise network in 2014, leaving franchisees with big losses. City Beat has seen emails from Australia Post to the union in April 2009 that promised no more than 30 corporate outlets would be franchised by the end of 2010, down from a planned 83 outlets. That’s a big difference between the promised 150 stores.

SHIP AHOY!

CITY Beat’s piece yesterday on the first big caravan show in Brisbane back in 1969, prompted some nautical reminiscing from reader Mike Flanigan.

Flanigan tell us the first Telegraph Boat Show was held in the Valley Pool in the mid-70s where the boats were actually on the water. “You could go on board and dream of places far away,” he recalls. “The boats were lifted by crane over the roof and into the pool.” Of course the boats were a lot smaller than today’s monsters.

ANGER PILLS

WHY are people so angry these days? City Beat was disturbed to see someone had scrawled a nasty message on the windscreen of someone’s car parked at Lutwyche Shopping Centre last week. “You (homophobic slur deleted). Learn how to park, you f. ing, shithead.” The car appeared to be parked perfectly so your diarist can only guess what had motivated this clearly short-fused person to write in some sort of paint on the person’s windscreen. And it’s not even Christmas shopping time.