Engineering a new $100 million winery
Construction is well underway for a new winery near Stewart, which will be built over the next 12 months.
Civiltest was engaged to perform the initial feasibility investigations, detailed design investigations, and was present for the commencement ceremony and is now providing services for the construction process to all contractors, the principal and the designers.
Mildura Rural City Council issued a permit for a winery which has a capacity to crush 84,000 tonnes of wine grapes.
After construction, the winery is expected to provide 60 permanent jobs and around 40 casuals and when all stages are completed the workforce will grow to 100 permanents and 100 casual staff.
When fully developed the size of the winery complex will make it one of the top five largest capacity wineries in Australia.
This year the Wei Long winery crushed around 20,000 tonnes of grapes from the Mildura district, including grapes from its supplier Southern Cross.
This was mainly processed in local wineries with Wei Long purchasing another 15 million litres of bulk wine from other local wineries. All of this wine was exported the company headquarters in China where it was bottled and sold through Wei Long’s sales distribution network.
The first sod was turned by Company President Mr Wang with about 100 people attending, many of whom were locals who are suppliers and advisors to the company.
Speaking at the sod-turning ceremony were Federal member for Mallee Andrew Broad, State Member for Mildura Peter Crisp and former Mildura Mayor Cr Glenn Milne.
The Wei Long company owns about 600 hectares of vineyards in the Mildura district and plans to spend another $25 million developing another 600 hectares of land it has purchased.
The two properties were bought at a cost of about AUD$15M.
A locally owned and staffed company, Southern Cross Farms, manages all the Wei Long properties, which directly employ about 10 people and indirectly several more.