Spanish producer Garcia Carrion is to plant a new vineyard in Chile as part of a strategy to increase sales and ensure a supply of grapes.
Marques de Carrion winery in Rioja. Image credit: Garcia Carrion
Garcia Carrion has unveiled plans to almost double sales to around 1.6bn (US$1.8bn) euros by 2020 and the company – best known for its Dom Simon in tetra pak – believes that having vineyards in both Spain and Chile will limit the risk of any shortfalls in production caused by potential periods of drought.
‘The vineyard in Chile will be the company’s biggest investment outside of Spain [in the coming years],’ Felix Villaverde, Garcia Carrion’s finance director told Decanter.com.
‘The investment in the vineyard will be at least 6m euros ($6.8m),’ he said, adding that Garcia Carrion had identified several potential sites for the location of the vineyard. Villaverde said Garcia Carrion was expected to make its investment Chile by early 2017.
He declined to say where the vineyard would be built. However, Garcia Carrion is thought to be looking at sites in Chile’s Curicó wine region.
Villaverde confirmed to Decanter.com that both market interest in Chile and the risk of drought in Spain had prompted the investment in the vineyard. Company chairman Jose Garcia Carrion was previously quoted in an interview with Spanish news agency Efe as saying that the firm had to produce wine in both hemispheres, to avoid any prospect of being left without wine as a result of drought.
This year, Garcia Carrion expects sell more than a billion litres of wine.
Written by Barnaby Eales
