The gateway from grape growers to wine cooperatives

ABSTRACTMember businesses focus on the production of grapes and must, whereas the cooperative entity focuses on wine-making and the marketing of the products. Member businesses can choose between two options. They can either deliver all their grapes to the cooperative (full delivery) or decide to spread their risk by supplying their grapes partially to various buyers besides the cooperative (partial delivery). Numerous wine cooperatives exclude partial delivery by a strict and unexceptional full delivery obligation. However, in practice, many cooperative members apply the partial delivery procedure. Suppose a full delivery obligation is in place; in that case, the cooperative members use various measures such as the legal division or splitting of the member companies to circumvent the full delivery obligation in practice. Even though partial delivery is actively pursued, the procedure is currently not investigated and researched. This paper aims to present the concept of partial delivery and to discuss challenges and opportunities for wine cooperatives if partial delivery is implemented officially.KEYWORDS: Partial delivery; wine cooperative; expert interviewscooperative challenges Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Member implementing partial delivery corresponds to the phrase partial supplier. Members supplying all their grapes (full delivery) corresponds to the phrase full supplier.2 The authors published an article in ‘Berichte über Landwirtschaft’, which the following paper is partly based on.3 By law, wine cooperatives are only allowed to produce wine from grapes produced by their members. They are not allowed to buy wines or grapes from other producers. This induces a considerable brake on the cooperatives’ competitive potential as non-cooperative wine producers can purchase as much as they like from whomever they like, providing them with advantages to react to market demands.4 Wine co-ops belong to the Raiffeisen cooperatives. According to their statutes, wine cooperatives are self-help, self-administration and self-responsibility organisations for grape growers (Deutscher Raiffeisenverband, Citation2017). They aim to improve the economic situation of their members.