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Advocacy
Protecting members’ ability to produce, market and sell sustainably and competitively.
Our Advocacy activities focus
on guidance for members, wine standards, government engagement, intellectual property protection, growing our people, promoting social responsibility, and encouraging free and fair trade.
Providing COVID-19 support to winegrowers
New Zealand responded to the outbreak of COVID-19 by imposing a strong national stay-at-home order, which activated just as harvest was beginning. Ahead of that, having observed early lockdown measures being implemented overseas, NZW had already begun preparations to ensure the New Zealand government would recognise grape harvesting and winemaking as “essential” under
any lockdown.
The government’s response to the pandemic was swiftly initiated as a
set of high-level principles. It was deliberately left up to industry to design and implement those practices. NZW supported this devolved approach, but it required an unprecedented response effort.
The NZW Advocacy team worked tirelessly to ensure that our key contacts at MPI and other government departments knew exactly how COVID-19 restrictions were affecting winegrowers, and to ensure the government’s constantly evolving
requirements and support measures were clearly communicated
to members.
We set up a virus response information portal on the NZW website, response email addresses and two dedicated 24/7 hotlines – one to respond to member compliance queries, and the other to allow rapid reporting and response for any public concerns around harvest. Members generously shared their own crisis procedures and protocols, which we synthesised into generalised guidance for members, updated every time
new requirements or new guidance was issued, and as we clarified requirements for labour movement, accommodation, transport and dozens of other issues with MPI.
The resulting COVID-19 webpages
had 35,000 page views, and there were over 21,000 user interactions with these pages, including downloads of our various documents, views of embedded videos etc. We responded to many hundreds of calls and emails, and offered members a range of webinars both on the requirements, and to provide support.
As the alert levels lowered (and as harvest concluded), we were able to move our focus to helping cellar doors, restaurants and other wine tourism businesses reopen in a safe way. u
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