Quo Vadis Kumala?

Friday, February 4th, 2011

“Upbeat and positive” is Bruce Jack’s succinct summation of his response to the news that Constellation has hived off a portion of its European and Australian business to Aussie private equity group, Champ.

“There’s more energy and excitement surrounding all the brands – Kumala, Fish Hoek and Flagstone – than there probably has been for the past 18 months,” Jack said yesterday. The dynamic creator of Flagstone and Fish Hoek which was bought out by Constellation in 2007 has already been tasked – along with Operations Director James Reid – with formalising a new strategic vision for the entity rebranded as Accolade Wines.

“I think they like the fact that the South African operation is lean and mean and we just keep our heads down. It’s about making wine and making money ultimately.

“The management structure hasn’t changed – the CEO is still Troy Christensen who served as President of European operations under Constellation – and the team remains in place. There might well be some changes going forward but time will tell. At present it’s business as usual.”

Jack was of the opinion that Champ had got an exceptionally good deal for the business and this might mean that funds would be made available for investment and growth of Accolade Wines.

“We’re really excited because Kumala’s growing well: it’s back at number one SA brand in the UK in terms of value. It lost its spot for a while but was always number one in terms of volume in that market. The past 12 months Kumala’s enjoyed 17% growth in value and 18% in volume.

“The other really good thing about the Champ deal is that we can really get going in the US market. Flagstone is ideally suited to the American market and perhaps suffered a bit under Constellation because that was their backyard.”

Jack reported that his isolation from Flagstone had come to an end and he was once again driving the quirky range. “The wines in the bottle are better than ever. They taste brilliant! I think they’ve benefitted from my absence from the cellar…” he said somewhat ruefully. He singled out Flagstone’s winning the coveted General Smuts Trophy with a young Semillon in 2010 as evidence of this.

“(Winemaker) Gerhard (Swart) has done an amazing job and we’ve already redesigned the labels to recapture that funky originality and moved away from the sort of corporate ‘dumbed down’ feel they’d resorted to. The Flagstone website is being worked on and will soon be relaunched to become more interactive.”