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"The Wine Institute of New Zealand has denied the industry&amp;#39;s international presence is under threat after press reports that certain members would withdraw due to lack of investment.The Institute refuted claims in NZ newspaper, The Business Herald, which just-drinks.com published last week, that its generic export promotion policy was in trouble.&amp;quot;Contrary to media reports, the Wine Institute has received no indication from any winery that they will be withdrawing from the industry&amp;#39;s programme of collective export promotions for 2000/2001,&amp;quot; said the Institute&amp;#39;s Anne-Marie McKenzie export marketing manager.The Institute went on the explain it had &amp;quot;recently proposed the industry&amp;#39;s largest ever export promotional programme with a planned investment of NZ$2m.&amp;quot; McKenzie explained: &amp;quot;Wineries participate in the programme on a voluntary user-pays basis and while the cut-off date for sign up is not until August 4, a number of wineries have already responded favourably. Wineries were briefed at the start of June on the programme via a series of seminars and mailings and the response to date has been uniformly positive.&amp;quot;Despite being a tiny player in world terms (0.2% of global production), the last decade has seen the New Zealand wine industry deliver strong growth in international sales (from NZ$18m in 1990 to an anticipated NZ$160m in 2000). Of the Institute&amp;#39;s funding, only 9% constituted generic promotional spend invested by the Institute on behalf of wineries during the past year and only 4% this year."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.just-drinks.com/news/nz-wine-institute-strikes-back-at-press-reports_id75077.aspx>