High-quality wine industry leadership Treasury Wine Estates Penfold’s Barossa Valley Barrel Hall Automation

Australia China Business Council Green Economy Accelerator program lead Anthony Coles was honoured to participate in the launch of Treasury Wine Estate’s world-first integrated automation wine production system at Penfold’s Barossa Valley packaging site on Tuesday 16th July.

The initiative is the latest demonstration of ACBC National sponsor TWE’s broader commitment to sustainability and innovation builds on the solar system installation at the new site in 2023. TWE’s Barossa Winery and Packaging Centre is the largest premium winemaking site in the Southern Hemisphere. Kerrin Petty, TWE’s Chief Supply & Sustainability Officer highlighted the fact that more than three years of work has gone into developing and testing the system.

The introduction of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) provides major safety benefits to the Barrel Hall by minimising manual handling and maximising efficiency by stacking barrels higher than traditional forklifts operated by humans (8-barrel stacks). The AGVs are powered 100% from on-site renewable electricity. The Barrel Management System (BMS) software manages the inventory instructions for the AGVs.

This new system is a key milestone in TWE’s efforts to support regional economies, improve energy efficiencies and reduce environmental impact. TWE’s leadership in innovation reinforces Penfold’s position as a global leader in high-quality wine industry development.

ACBC’s Anthony Coles is currently leading a program of cross-border technical cooperation between Australia and China’s wine industry to deepen industry engagement beyond transactional product sales to more collaborative commerce. This includes programs sharing knowledge on industry advances such as this barrel automation system, helping each other on wine region tourism marketing, wine production technical research, sustainable winegrowing and smart AgTech.

For those interested in finding our more about new Green Economy opportunities, Anthony is leading a China Wine Market AgTech Study Tour to 3 wine regions in China (Shandong, Hebei, Ningxia) in October. More details available from Anthony here.

Jodie Rowlands, TWE’s Director, Supply Technology & Innovation, provided key statistics for the site:
– 35,000m2 of barrel hall area
– 9 driverless forklifts
– Proprietary barrel management software system (BMS)
– Automated barrel washing and filling facilities (ABB Robotics)
– Individual barrel identification system (QR/RFID)
– 24 hour operations
– Eight barrel-high stacking boosts red wine handling capacity to 125,000 barrels

Also at the event were key stakeholders in ACBC’s high-quality wine industry collaboration program including South Australia’s Department for Primary Industries and Regional Development (PIRSA), SA Wine Industry Association (SAWIA), Barossa Australia, Barossa Council.