WOSA CEO Su Birch waded into the bulk wine export battle yesterday with a tweet @subirch: “But I do understand that Safrica has to be competitive, and if we are not, then jobs on farms are at stake, so WOSA is not anti bulk.” Jobs in related industries are clearly not an issue as the Guardian reported at the end of August:”The wine industry loses about 107 jobs for every 10m litres of bulk wine exported, according to a three-year study by Wines of South Africa.”

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The government had threatened to import Scotch in bulk and bottle it locally in a trade war, but as the Financial Times reports, Distell has beaten them to it. Local whisky Three Ships is reporting double digit volume growth against 7% for imported Scotch in a spirits category growing at 27%.