Duxton Vineyards warning: “unable to meet its current payment obligation”

Duxton Vineyards has sacked 13 staff, delayed payments to creditors and is about to rationalise plantings. Find out why.

Duxton director Ed Peter’s vineyard operations are struggling, forcing his team to sack 13 staff, delay payments to creditors and rationalise plantings.

South Australian veteran agri-investment manager Ed Peter’s company Duxton Vineyards is struggling to pay its creditors, has sacked 13 staff and is preparing to rationalise its plantings.

Duxton Vineyards general manager Wayne Ellis said “the continued challenges for the Australian wine industry are well documented and it’s amidst this backdrop that Duxton Vineyards has made the very difficult decision of undertaking a necessary restructure of its operations to best position the business for the future.

“That includes a rationalisation of vineyard plantings, which has regretfully led to 13 redundancies within the DV team,” Mr Ellis said.

“We are also continuing to work closely with our key partners as we seek to ensure the company is best structured to leverage industry conditions, which are showing some early signs of improvement.”

The company’s assets include a winery at Buronga, three vineyards near Wentworth, with others at Gol Gol, Coomealla and Euston.

Duxton Vineyards finance officer Amanda van Hoof issued an email to creditors this week warning it was “likely going to be unable to meet its current payment obligation by the due date”.

She said the delay was due to “a late drawdown of our product by some of our key customers in the first weeks after vintage.

Duxton letter to suppliers warning of delayed payment.

“Please be assured that this should only be a short-term issue that we are actively managing, and that we expect to settle our obligations with you as soon as we are in a position to do so, which we currently anticipate to be around mid-August.”

Australian Securities and Investments Commission records show a flurry of activity, with Duxton Vineyards issuing notices of six share restructures in the past two weeks.