Accolade chief financial officer Mike Walsh said the company wanted to allocate investment that was focused on winemaking, sales and marketing, and not back-office functions.
“We are acutely aware that this will be a time of uncertainty for some of Accolade Wines’ employees and we are determined to ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible and to offer appropriate support to anyone impacted by the review,” Mr Walsh said in a statement.
He said some back-office functions could be “better supported and optimised by partners with deep expertise and scale in those specific areas”. He said the final scope of the project was yet to be determined, but it is anticipated it “may result in the transfer of some roles to external service providers”.
Moving aggressively
Carlyle acquired Accolade in April last year from another private equity group, CHAMP, which had owned it since 2011. Carlyle also bought out the 20 per cent stake owned by US liquor company Constellation Wines.
It has been moving aggressively to lift investment returns and has also just hired Treasury Wines’ top China executive, Peter Dixon, as part of a strategy to increase sales to China.
Mr Dixon had been the managing director of Asia and global travel retail for Treasury. China is the growth engine for Treasury and robust profit growth in that region has been a big driver of a four-fold rise in the Treasury share price since 2014.
Former Carlton & United Breweries beer executive Ari Mervis, who was briefly the chief executive of dairy processor Murray Goulburn, became chairman of Accolade last August.
CHAMP rebadged the former BRL Hardy wine business to Accolade Wines after it acquired the operations in 2011.
BRL Hardy had its headquarters at a Reynella winery and bottling plant in Adelaide’s outer southern suburbs when it was a separately listed ASX company before a $1.9 billion acquisition in 2003 by Constellation.
But the bottling plant was shut in 2012 with the loss of 175 jobs.
A rising Australian dollar crimped profits from exports under Constellation’s ownership, before it agreed to sell to CHAMP for a fraction of the price it paid at the top of the market.
The Accolade buyout marked the second big investment in Australia for Carlyle in a short space of time, after it bought prescription and over-the-counter drug maker iNova Pharmaceuticals for $930 million in mid-2017 in conjunction with Australian buyout firm Pacific Equity Partners.
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