For winery owners and vineyard managers in Marlborough, Hawke's Bay, Central Otago and beyond, that gap is not just a headline — it is a margin problem that demands a practical response.

What the Report Actually Says

NZW released its 2026 Annual Report on 23 September 2026 [1]. The headline figures are significant: exports reached NZ$2.108 billion and export volume increased to 306.2 million litres in the 12 months to June 2026 [1]. NZW described the result as an overall sales increase of 8%, driven by export growth, and noted it represents the industry's second-highest June year total on record [1].

At the same time, Vintage 2026 delivered a smaller harvest of approximately 440,000 tonnes, down a significant 15% on the previous year [1]. NZW's own framing is that the smaller vintage is bringing production into closer balance with current market demand and supporting the industry's focus on sustainable long-term growth [1]. NZW Chair Fabian Yukich acknowledged the environment directly: "This has been a challenging year across the global wine industry, but New Zealand wine continues to show remarkable resilience." [1]

CEO Anishka Jelicich, appointed to the role in July, outlined a clear strategic direction: "Our new strategy has a clear purpose: to elevate and sustain the New Zealand wine industry by empowering our members," Ms Jelicich said. "This means giving growers and wineries the information, advocacy, and practical support they need to make well-informed decisions."

New Zealand wine is currently New Zealand's eighth-largest export good, and New Zealand produces just over 1% of the world's wine [1]. The industry counts over 600 grower members and over 700 winery members with NZW [1].

The Volume-vs-Value Gap: Why It Matters for Your Business

NZW's report shows exports reached NZ$2.108 billion on 306.2 million litres — an overall sales increase of 8% driven by export growth [1]. For a large Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc operation shipping hundreds of thousands of cases, even a small per-litre decline compounds quickly across total volume. For a boutique Central Otago Pinot Noir producer, the effect is felt differently — in the relative attractiveness of bulk versus packaged formats, and in what importers are willing to pay for a container.

The core challenge is that New Zealand wine continued to outperform the wider category in key markets, yet individual businesses across the sector were making adjustments, as NZW noted in its report [1]. Outperforming a declining category still means navigating real commercial pressure.

Practically, this gap shows up in three places:

Realised price per litre by market. A winery exporting to the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia simultaneously may find that each market's realised price per litre diverges meaningfully. Tracking this figure by destination — not just in aggregate — is the starting point for any margin conversation.
Bulk versus packaged mix. Bulk wine typically clears inventory faster and at lower cost-to-serve, but it compresses margin per litre. In a year where volume growth is outrunning value growth, the temptation to shift mix toward bulk deserves scrutiny against your cost structure.
Cost per litre in the winery. Labour, energy, packaging materials, and compliance overhead are largely fixed on a per-batch basis. When average selling price per litre falls, every dollar of untracked cost becomes more painful.

Vintage 2026 and Contract Grape Prices

Vintage 2026 delivered a smaller harvest of approximately 440,000 tonnes, down a significant 15% on the previous year, bringing production into closer balance with current market demand [1]. This context introduces a separate set of decisions for wineries that purchase contract grapes. A smaller vintage tightens supply, which in normal circumstances supports grape prices. However, if the broader context is one of inventory overhang from prior vintages and softer average export prices, the negotiation between growers and wineries becomes genuinely complex.

For regions like Hawke's Bay, where diverse varieties and production styles mean that some blocks are more exposed to bulk markets than others, the vintage shortfall lands differently across the portfolio. A producer with long-term contracts will be insulated from spot-market volatility; one relying on spot purchasing faces a tighter supply pool.

NZW's framing — that the smaller harvest brings production into closer balance with demand — is strategically coherent. The practical question for individual businesses is whether their stock position and forward contracts align with that rebalancing, or whether they are caught between a lower-volume vintage and existing supply commitments.

Rebalancing Stock: Practical Steps for Winery Operators

With export value and volume moving at different rates, and a smaller vintage reducing incoming supply, winery operators face a stock optimisation problem. A few principles apply regardless of scale:

Segment your inventory by format and destination. Packaged wine bound for premium on-premise channels carries different margin dynamics than bulk wine destined for private label. Treating all stock as a single pool obscures the real picture.

Recalculate cost and margin per litre, not per case. As the industry shifts toward discussing litres (NZW's own reporting metric), internal reporting that still operates on a per-case basis can create blind spots. Converting your cost and revenue data to a per-litre basis aligns your internal numbers with the market signals NZW is publishing.

Revisit forward grape contracts in light of Vintage 2026. With a smaller harvest bringing production into closer balance with current market demand, both growers and wineries are well placed to reassess how existing commitments align with the new supply reality.

Using Data to Navigate the Next 12 Months

NZW's strategy has a clear purpose: to elevate and sustain the New Zealand wine industry by empowering members — giving growers and wineries the information, advocacy, and practical support they need to make well-informed decisions [1]. That framing matters: the industry body is explicitly positioning data and information as a member benefit, not just a reporting function.

For wineries of any size, this points toward a clear internal discipline: the wineries that will manage margin most effectively in a volume-growth, value-flat environment are those that can close the loop between vineyard data, production costs, and export realised prices — quickly enough to make decisions, not just report on them after the fact.

Cepaos is built to support exactly that discipline. From harvest intake and lot traceability through to costing and finance tools that track product cost per lot, and export documentation that connects cellar to shipment, Cepaos gives your team a single operational record. Smart Alerts can flag out-of-range vessel temperatures or analysis expirations before they become cost events, and the Exporter add-on covers export documents by destination country, certificates of analysis, and warehouse-to-port timelines — the kind of detail that matters when you are managing multiple markets with different per-litre dynamics.

In a year when the margin is in the detail, having that detail organised and accessible is not a luxury.

Ready to track cost and margin per litre across every lot, vintage, and market? Explore Cepaos for New Zealand wineries and see how your operation can bring vineyard data, production costs, and export records together in one place.

Sources

Export growth lifts confidence amid challenging year for New Zealand wine — nzwine.com, accessed 27 October 2026. https://www.nzwine.com/en/media/media-releases/nzw-ar2026/