This year’s Australian Liquor Industry Awards (ALIA) were a triumph for SouthTrade International, winning Off-premise Supplier of the Year.
It was a big moment for the company, which originally started with a focus on the on-premise. For SouthTrade’s Managing Director, Ray Noble, the recognition shows how the business has grown for the better, weathering the challenges of the pandemic hand-in-hand with its customers.
“SouthTrade started proudly as an on-trade specialist business with education at the forefront; however due to a combination of our expanding portfolio, our strong growth ambitions and COVID we deliberately shifted more focus into how we can also win in the off-trade,” Noble said.
“Our approach has been all around being customer obsessed; asking what our customers need and why SouthTrade would be a good fit to mutually grow our businesses. We then provide solutions that hopefully add value to categories, push boundaries by being brave with our brands and bold in our thinking to try things that our competitors may not be up for.
“Lastly we want to be margin accretive and put the right brands in the right type of outlets so they actually sell and not gather dust!”
Being nominated and voted by the industry, the finalist pool at ALIA is always full of incredibly strong companies and people.
Thinking about what made SouthTrade stand out to the judges this year, Noble said: “I hope it was our actions, our results and the valued partnerships we have put a lot of effort into building.
“As a business we have significantly grown in terms of volume, people capability and retail footprint. Over the last few years we have doubled in size to now be a $200M business with plans to double again before too long. We can only achieve these results by building strong partnerships with our trade partners and selling exciting brands that consumers want.”
It was an electric moment when SouthTrade was announced as the 2022 Off-premise Supplier of the Year on the night. To the sounds of a cheering crowd, the whole team made their way up on stage to accept the award, decked out in their matching Fireball costumes (which also saw them win one of the Best Dressed Team awards under the 2022 ALIA theme, ‘Dress for your next holiday’).
Reflecting on how that moment felt to him and the team Noble said they were: “extremely proud of how far we have come with our retail ambitions over the last few years, very appreciative of the ongoing support we have been given from the trade as we continue to learn our craft and excited about what the future holds.
“A HUGE thanks for your ongoing support and vote of confidence – we are far from perfect and appreciate the ongoing honest feedback to help us better deliver on your needs.”
Fire in the hole, baby!