Simonsvlei Wines has become the first stand-alone co-operative cellar in South Africa to change its structure from a collective delivery agreement to providing individual contracts with shareholders.
This Paarl-based cellar has broken with tradition, which in 2005 will be a hundred years old – abandoning its co-operative structure and “pool account”.
In 1996 four Stellenbosch co-operatives bandied together to form Stellenbosch Vineyards and ventured into the world as a company, but Simonsvlei is the first to take that step alone.
Chairman of Simonsvlei International, Francois de Manielle, said it had mirrored the KWV pattern by forming a company in 1997 and then abandoning its co-operative practices this year. He said he foresaw the formal liquidating of the co-op structure as the next logical step.
