Jacobs Creek raises a toast to local AI for liquid returns

The Australian winemaker behind Jacobs Creek and a host of other international labels has turned to locally-grown artificial intelligence software to optimise its sales, marketing and supply chain decisions.

Pernod Ricard Winemakers, itself a subsidiary of the French company that owns GH Mumm, has partnered with Adelaide’s Complexica for its AI Foundations project, which seeks to blend machine learning and AI capabilities into a number of production and supply chain functions.

Pernod Ricard's IT director, Simon Bennett, said the AI Foundations project with Complexica combines wine industry expertise and data science to drive operational efficiency.

The significant investment will move Pernod Ricard away from paper, whiteboard and spreadsheet-based systems onto a number of cloud-hosted applications for planning, scheduling, and push-pull marketing optimisation.

Complexica CEO, Matt Michalewicz said the machine learning solutions will be applied to consolidate and streamline asset use, while maintaining quality and balance volume throughput with demand.

Global operations director at the winemaker, Brett McKinnon, added that the company was looking to apply AI analysis and enhancement not just to the company’s Australian operations, centred on Jacobs Creek in the Barossa Valley, but also to its international operations across Spain, California’s Nappa Valley, and New Zealand’s Marlborough region.

“After conducting an evaluation and assessment process earlier this year, we have selected Complexica as our vendor of choice for our AI Foundations project, which will seek to optimise our business performance, by enhancing decision making and improving our ways of working, while making work safer for our employees,” McKinnon said.