A New Company With a Long History

A New Company With a Long History

Nobilo Wine Group CEO Joe Stanton today announced a change of company name to Constellation New Zealand effective from 1 May 2008, saying "the launch of Constellation New Zealand marks the start of a new era for our company. This signals our strategy is firmly centred on our exciting and powerful premium wine brands."

Joe Stanton explained "that as New Zealand's second largest producer and marketer of wine, the company has achieved long standing success to date by focusing on profitable sales growth. We now believe it is timely to place our company's brands at the forefront of our growth plans."

Constellation New Zealand produces wines from grapes sourced from every major wine growing region in New Zealand with a range of premium brands including Kim Crawford Wines, Nobilo, Monkey Bay, Selaks and Drylands.

"Following a period of substantial investment by owners Constellation Brands, we enjoy a position of considerable strength both here and internationally. Constellation New Zealand is set to capitalise on that strength to build and sustain an increasingly premium position for our brands globally."

"Considerable investment has been made in securing new premium vineyard sites and developing state of the art wineries in Marlborough and Hawkes Bay resulting in improved wine quality. The time has arrived to share the benefits with our consumers"

Stanton says "that continued export growth is critical to the long term success of the New Zealand wine industry and that Constellation New Zealand looks forward to making an important contribution to the industry succeeding in the global markets"

"By drawing on Constellation Brands global resources and its distribution strength in particular we have been able to grow our premium brand exports considerably in recent years and we currently account of 4 out of every 10 bottles of New Zealand wine consumed in the USA market"

The name change from Nobilo Wine Group to Constellation New Zealand also recognises the final step in the integration of the Nobilo and Kim Crawford businesses and allows the brands to free themselves from the corporate identity and to perform purely as premium wine brands in the global marketplace.

ENDS

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