New co-packer Mercenary Premier buys TWE California property

Mercenary Premier purchased a California winery from Treasury Wine Estates.

The new beverage co-packer has acquired the Baileyana Winery property located in San Luis Obispo County for an undisclosed amount.

In a statement on LinkedIn yesterday (June 24), the California-based business, formerly known as Mercenary Canning Solutions, announced the launch of Mercenary Premier and the purchase of a facility in Edna Valley.

Treasury Wine Estates is also certified Just drinks that the property has been sold. The group said it could no longer talk about “transactions in specific assets or assets that may or may not be on the market”.

“This facility will serve as a focal point for the company to provide complete winemaking services, expanding its capabilities beyond mobile packaging and winemaking,” said Premier Mercenary.

The co-packer aims to “build California’s leading destination for custom vinification and end-to-end winemaking services,” the statement added.

According to the business, the Baileyana Winery estate “has some of the best winemaking technology available in the region”.

It also said “new laboratory equipment provides reliable, timely in-house analysis to support precision winemaking and high efficiency”.

The company, which looks set to start operations in 2026, describes itself on its website as a “beverage product manufacturing and packaging company”.

Its services include custom crushing, bulk wine production, blending, wine-based beverage production and packaging services such as counterpressure canning.

Treasury Wine Estates signaled its intention to sell some of its facilities in California at its investor day earlier this month.

Speaking to analysts at an event on June 4, CEO Sam Fischer said that TWE has already conducted a “detailed assessment of the demand landscape” in the US, and found that its sales in California “will require significant changes to address what is a structural mismatch between capacity and future portfolio needs”.

TWE has already started implementing these changes, the CEO then commented. It includes reducing the number of growers the company works with and “planting more vineyards”, as well as selling “higher levels of luxury wine from the latest productions kept on our balance sheet” for a long time.

Later in the event, the group’s chief sustainability officer Kerrin Petty provided more details on how TWE plans to make changes to its US supply chain.

In California, as well as cutting the grower network and declining vineyards, Petty said the group was looking to focus on “financially reducing our owned and leased vineyards in Napa, Sonoma and the Central Coast and addressing the capacity and utilization of our wineries and packaging equipment”.

St. Helena Winery is becoming the group’s “biggest US luxury production base,” Perrin said. TWE will move the production of Frank Family Vineyards and Stag’s Leap Winery to the site. Its Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo wineries “will be closed and liquidated within the next 12 months”, he added.

TWE’s bottling plant in Sonoma will be reduced in size, “reflecting lower volumes moving”.

Fischer’s “revolutionary program” – called Ascent – was first introduced in December. It includes a cost saving target of A$100m (US$71.4m) a year over the next three financial years.

At that investor day, the company also revealed that as part of its “transformation” plan, it was reviewing its business in the Americas and had plans to reduce its product range from 76 to less than 30 products.

During a question and answer session, interim CFO Justin Pipito clarified any benefits of these supply chain changes would not be part of the A$100m cost savings under the Ascent plan.

“Fledging co-packer Mercenary Premier buys TWE California location” was originally created and published by Just Drinks, a product owned by GlobalData.