A little Nashik goes a long way in Italy

New Delhi: Make-in-India wine machinery gets a taste of Italy. Earlier this month, a little-known wine-equipment maker in Nashik, Envision Equipments, shipped a pair of Aroma multiplier tanks to Florence-marking a quiet but significant first: Italy, the global hub of wine-machinery manufacturing, had imported specialised wine equipment from India.

As the giant machines-with capacities of 2,000 and 1,200 litres respectively-make their way from Mumbai's Nhava Sheva port to Italy, their journey marks a significant milestone for India's wine-equipment industry. Earlier, wine-processing equipment had been exported to countries including Nepal, Sri Lanka and Uganda. Yet, three wine-machine makers told ET that their growth and long-term sustainability would depend less on exports, even to Europe, than on how far state governments are willing to liberalise wine policies and foster the growth of domestic wineries.


"What we have just exported is a small consignment, worth about 21,000, and we are in talks with our Italian buyer to export another 10 machines. But symbolically, it means a lot-Make-in-India wine equipment being shipped to none other than Italy," said Harsh Jha, managing director of Envision Equipments.

Yet, Jha said, the company's optimism about the future rests less on overseas orders than on the growth of India's domestic winery industry. Several non-grape wineries have sprung up in Lucknow and Muzaffarnagar in recent years, he said, and the trend could gather pace in Rajasthan and Uttarakhand as state governments are in consultation with various stakeholders to ease stringent regulations and make it easier for wineries to set up shops by using locally grown fruit.

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The shift is already visible on the outskirts of Lucknow, where a winery was set up last year amid a sprawling 100-acre mango orchard-a bet on the untapped potential of winemaking beyond India's traditional grape-growing regions.

"Currently, India has around 140 wineries, of which only 50-60 are fully operational," said Neeraj Agarwal, a Nashik-based wine consultant and former executive at Sula Vineyards, home to India's largest winery. The overwhelming majority of factories, he added, are concentrated in Maharashtra's Nashik wine belt, regarded as the country's wine capital, with a smaller presence in Karnataka and select states.

"Of late, UP has emerged as a new hotspot, with demand for wine equipment growing there. In fact, the emergence of fruit-based wineries beyond grapes could redraw India's wine map," he said.

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For Gurdeep Singh, CEO of Ghaziabad-based Fabtech Innovations, too, the bigger opportunity may lie closer home. The company, which primarily makes food-processing equipment, has been manufacturing wine-processing machinery for more than a decade and exported a few machines to a new winery in Uganda last year.

"But I believe our growth will come increasingly from domestic wineries, provided more states relax their policies and make it easier to set up new wineries," Singh said. He added that Fabtech has already supplied machinery to a newly established winery in Muzaffarnagar.

While the global wine industry has shrunk in recent years, the Indian market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 15%, rising from $890 million in 2025 to $2.6 billion by 2033, according to a Grand View Horizon report published in March.

The report identifies India's large young population, rapid urbanisation and the growing perception of wine as a status symbol as key factors likely to drive this growth.