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News
£10m investment earmarked for Hardys
Champ Private Equity, owner of Accolade Wines since late 2010, is to invest over £10 million in the Hardys brand.
News of the investment was announced by Champ managing director John Haddock at dinner in London last night to celebrate Hardys 160th anniversary – the brand was established in Australia in 1853.
Speaking to attendees at the event, which was held on the top floor of 30 St Mary Axe, more commonly known as The Gerkin, Haddock stated, “Accolade Wines will invest in excess of £10 million in the Hardys brand on a global basis.”
Continuing, he stated that Champ felt a it had “a responsibility” to invest in the brand, adding that the Australian Private Equity business believed it would get a return on the investment.
Concluding, Haddoch said of Accolade Wines, formerly known as Constellation, “We are going to make a good company a great company.”
The new look for Hardys Nottage Hill
Meanwhile, Bill Hardy, a fifth generation winemaker of the Hardys family, who was also present at the evening celebration, stressed the importance of the UK market specifically. “This is the market that has put us on the world map… and we sell more here than we do in Australia,” he said.
The dinner was also a chance to celebrate a re-launch for Hardys, which, as previously reported by db, has involved range revisions, a repackage, as well as the addition of new labels and reblends of existing wines to more clearly differentiate between the different tiers in the Hardys line-up.
UK general manager at Accolade, Paul Schaafsma said the re-launch was “the culmination of 12 months of hard work.”
Accolade Wines is the largest wine company by volume in the UK and Australia. The company owns Hardys and Banrock Station in Australia as well as South Africa’s Kumala brand, and California’s Echo Falls and Geyser Peak. Other labels owned by Accolade include Stowells wine, Stone’s Ginger Wine and Babycham Perry. The company also own a 50% share of UK distributor Matthew Clark and the Bristol-based bottling facility called Accolade Park, which you can read more about here.