By Amy Looker, editor – National Liquor News
The annual Australian Liquor Stores Association (ALSA) conference has wrapped up in Cairns this afternoon with confirmation that the industry body will be undergoing a restructure to provide better support to Australia's liquor retailers.
ALSA chief executive officer Terry Mott (pictured) said the restructure will provide increased resources to the State and Territory-based Liquor Stores Associations (LSAs) while freeing up ALSA to focus its resources on national issues.
"About a year ago we got to the point of getting an agreement from the ALSA board, after discussing this issue for the last five years, that if ALSA was able to take a leadership role in the space and properly represent what you needed as retailers in the regulatory, political and community space we needed to do something entirely different," Mott told delegates.
ALSA made the decision late last year to appoint an external consultant for a performance audit review who recommended that a restructure take place, which was formally implemented on July 1.
Part of the restructure includes the appointment of a media policy officer for ALSA, while Mott, who previously split his time between ALSA and LSA NSW, has now been appointed as the full time CEO of ALSA.
"With this increased support we can now efficiently provide the resources that the states and territories haven't had and we're confident that we can get a much greater share of voice that will be better organised and strategically positioned to help get retailers issues out there in the marketplace."
ALSA president Giuseppe Minissale said the restructure has upped the resources at ALSA and now allows ALSA and the LSAs to speak with the same voice.
"Originally when the LSAs were formed, it was at a state level and then we created a body called ALSA that was supposed to tackle national issues. As time has gone by we've realised that the State bureaucracy levels is that they come up with their own plans and we weren't sure what was happening in each State.
"So to create this body that was more effective, we had to have a resource and now we have a body that feeds back to each State and everyone is working to the same tune," said Minissale.