By CASEY NEILL
MURMURS of “why didn’t I think of this?” echoed around the room when Lupe Wines CEO Georgia Beattie took to the stage last Wednesday night.
“I thought you looked thirsty,” she said while producing a single serve of white wine for awards chairman James Sturgess.
He peeled back the seal atop the PET plastic cup with ease and the audience wondered at the innovation’s simplicity.
Ms Beattie came up with the concept after reaching the bar at a Melbourne music festival to find “beer or lolly water” as her only options.
The bar manager told her serving wine was “too hard at outdoor events”.
Her family has a history in wine, and she’d just returned from studying entrepreneurship in Boston, USA, so she sought a solution.
“It’s a very traditional industry, so you had to tread carefully,” she said.
Ms Beattie considered cans, but wine in cans requires a much different chemical compound.
After also considering pouches, she ran with a single-serve, recyclable PET glass with a robust but easy to remove seal.
The first rolled off the Dandenong production line last year and has earned Lupe Wines the Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce 2013 Innovation Award.
Japan, Korea and Taiwan are Lupe’s main markets, but an Australian marketing team is now working on breaking into the local market.
Awards chairman James Sturgess said the Beattie family was a mix of wine-lovers and wine makers with a passion for the outdoors.
The family’s challenges with the single-serve product were selecting appropriate plastics, creating a robust seal that was also easy to open, and to ensure a long shelf-life.
“All of these challenges had to be solved while at the same time maintaining the quality product which the Beattie family had become known for,” Mr Sturgess said.
Ms Beattie found an individual in the UK who had developed equipment that could fill and seal a single-serve product.
She also found PET plastics and wine went well together, and turned to her wine-making suppliers for a product with a nine to 12-month shelf-life.
“In searching for customers, the business cleverly teamed up with Treasury Wine Estate which is an arm of Rosemount,” Mr Sturgess said.
“Rosemount is the supplier to the AFL and so the product was quickly in the marketplace and gaining notoriety.
“Another important opportunity that the single serve product can create is through mini bars in hotels.”
Ms Beattie said a sparkling product was also in research and development.
The company was named in BRW’s Top 10 Start Ups to watch in 2012 and has grown from zero turnover 18 months ago to more than $1 million.
Ms Beattie’s goal is to exceed a $20 million turnover by 2020.
Lupe Wines was also nominated for the Manufacturing, Small Business, Service Excellence and Premier Regional Business awards.
