Australia's McWilliam's Wines buys back Gallo shares

By Gemma McKenna

Published: 23 October, 2014

Australia's McWilliam's Wines Group has returned to 100% family ownership after buying the remaining shares owned by E&J Gallo.

Gallo has held minority shares in the company for the past 13 years, until now when the family shareholders unanimously supported a decision to buy back those owned by Gallo.

Originally founded by Samuel McWilliam in New South Wales, McWilliam's sources from premium winegrowing regions across New South Wales including Riverina, Hilltops, Tumbarumba and Orange.

McWilliam's chairman and fifth generation family member Jeff McWilliam said: "This is a significant milestone in the company's history. We are a proud multi-generational family-owned wine producer, and the decision to acquire E&J Gallo Winery's shares in the business was unanimously supported at the recent shareholder meeting."

Chief executive Rob Blackwell said: "In the past two years, McWilliam's has undergone significant capital restructuring in order to make our business stronger. This has enabled us to take advantage of opportunities as they arise across the export and domestic markets - and one of the very positive outcomes of this is the company returning to being 100% owned by the McWilliam's family for the first time in 13 years."

The McWilliam's wines - including the recently launched Appellation range, are distributed by Kingsland in the UK since March of this year. Prior to that they were brought to market in the UK by PLB.

UK sales director James Roberts told Harpers.co.uk back in April that it was completely overhauling its portfolio in order to better appeal to consumers, and differentiate itself from the "bit staid" Australian category overall. Roberts described the move to Kingsland as "hand in glove" with its overall repositioning strategy, which has seen it become more premium. It also uses Kingsland's bottling facilities in Irlam, Manchester, to bottle its Foundation wines - JJ McWilliam and Sunstone.

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