A south-west Western Australian wine bottling facility is looking to switch to nitrogen gas

The Capel Vale Winery usually uses carbon dioxide to bottle wine for 100 WA wineries, but has been unable to source any CO2, because it is no longer being produced, due to the gas shortage.

The winery has now opted to use nitrogen gas which costs three times as much.

Site manager Keith Warrick says he is negotiating with his supplier, working out the logistics to get the nitrogen to the south-west.

"They have at least had somebody on site that's determined the appropriate location for the bulk vessel, the amount of engineering that's going to be required to get it up and running," he said.

Australian Bulk Wine Exports Plummet

A thirty three percent decline in bulk wine shipments and 41 percent drop in tetra -pack shipments has led to a nine percent drop in the volume of Australian wine exports, reports Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation.

The volume of wine exports fell to 724 million litres in the 12 months to the end of May this year, the AWBC says, while the value of overall wine exports dropped seven per cent to $2.8 billion, in the same period.

Lawrie Stanford from the AWBC says while bulk shipments have declined, the rate of bottled shipments has also slowed in recent months as they grew only 1%, by 8 million litres.