By Michael Waters, Chief Executive Officer of Retail Drinks Australia
Whilst 2021 is barely over a month old, Retail Drinks is already off to a flying start for 2021 with a number of significant announcements affecting liquor retailers across the country.
Retail Drinks’ Online Code has helped inform a set of soon-to-be released global standards around online alcohol sales and delivery, with the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD) announcing in January the formation of a global alliance of the world’s leading international beer, wine, and spirits producers, online retailers and e-commerce and delivery platform.
We have also sprung into action to ensure retail liquor outlets were able to remain open during lockdowns which were declared in both Queensland and Western Australia following community cases of COVID-19 from hotel quarantine. On both occasions, Retail Drinks was successful in ensuring that all liquor outlets could continue to remain open throughout both of these lockdown periods.
On the member services side, we are excited to have now launched the 2021 Retail Drinks Industry Awards with nominations for the Awards Program open throughout February. Both the Liquor Retail Summit and Awards will be held in an entirely digital format for the first time on 19 May. We will have more things to announce shortly regarding both the Summit and Awards in the coming weeks.
We are pleased to have made such a great start already to 2021 and look forward to continuing to this positive momentum throughout 2021 and delivering on our major strategic priorities announced at our AGM last year.