Champagne Indage will pay a further non refundable $3 million deposit and other running costs and interest incurred to defer settlement of its purchase of the Loxton Winery owned by AVL. Indage had already paid cash deposit of $3 million advance towards the purchase.
Settlement is subject to payment of the deposit, costs and interest being made by November 20th (today). Australian Vintage has agreed to apply this payment to the purchase of wine from Thachi Wines, a fully owned Australian subsidiary of Indage.
The fifth largest winery of Australia was supposedly sold to indage for A$60 million earlier this year. The deal was to be closed initially on 30th September and mutaully extended totill OCtober 31st. AVL had announced before the date that Indage had requested to put a hold on the deal though they wanted to close the deal eventually.
Santosh Verma, Director of Global Marketing and Strategy for Champagne Indage, who has been stationed in London to focus on that market says, "Indage continues to be fully committed to the purchase of the Loxton Winery".
Earlier, Ranjit Chougule, the MD of the company had confirmed to delWine that the deal had been merely put on hold with the mutual consent. Apparently, both the parties were trying to sort out the differences and the modalities to avoid the deal going sour. In today's date AVL may not easily find a buyer and would continue to feel the cash crunch.
Dane Hudson, CEO for Australian Vintage, said "With the 2009 vintage processing starting in January we believed it was in the best interests of growers, customers and shareholders to defer settlement to shortly after the end of vintage". |