Professor Roberta Crouch, director of wine business programs at Flinders University, said the state’s wine industry has suffered from China slapping tariffs on exports.

Add to that the Covid pandemic closing cellar doors, bushfires decimating Adelaide Hills vineyards, and a hyper competitive global wine market.

Prof Crouch is joining a panel this week as part of national fire and emergency services conference AFAC to explore the best ways to build new resilience into the wine and wine tourism industry.

“I’m going to throw a pebble into the pond asking how long will being sustainable remain a positive advantage, probably not much longer, it will be expected,” she said.

It is important to be looking for the next trend, to be researching markets better, Prof Crouch said, “the fact that tariffs hit so hard and came almost as a surprise, that shouldn’t have been a surprise.”

Australia’s wine exports plummeted by 30 per cent or $860 million in 2021, as the first full year of China’s crippling tariffs on bottled Australian wine took hold.

Exploring the International Corruption Index Map is a starting point to understanding challenges in export markets like those that have emerged in China, Prof Crouch suggested.

While tracking global trends can provide opportunity to build resilience in diversifying in sectors like the increasingly popular non-alcoholic drinks market.

“Look at what the beer sector has done, almost every brand has a zero-alcohol beer and yet where is the range of low and no alcohol wines on the shelves?” Prof Crouch said.

“Australia makes very good wine, Australia makes a lot of it, but in a hyper competitive global market, the industry can’t always chase low-hanging fruit.”

This week’s panel discussion will urge wineries to consider new opportunities, like using pop up cellar doors in the city rather than more expensive regional operations, or using technology to produce wines more economically in the face of labour shortages.

“Our costs are so high compared to our competitors in countries like Chile and South Africa in terms of wages, land, electricity and water, so if you can use technology effectively you may save on these costs,” Prof Crouch said.

Experts in digital communications, wine tourism and sustainability along with vineyard planning and water management will be on the event panel.

Adelaide is hosting the national emergency management AFAC22 conference Connecting Communities. Creating Resilience, at the Adelaide Convention Centre from August 23.

Thousands of delegates are expected at the event that also features the Institution of Fire Engineers (Australia) National Conference and the Australian Disaster Resilience Conference.

Other sessions include building and planning for resilient communities using the physical impact of the Kangaroo Island and Cudlee Creek bushfires as case studies.

Women and Firefighting Australasia and the Metropolitan Fire Service are also hosting a field trip entitled More than just holding a hose: diverse careers in firefighting.