To enable Vinehealth Australia (Vinehealth) to effectively carry out its functions and activities for you under the Phylloxera and Grape Industry Act 1995, we need to ensure we have your up-to-date contact details so we can contact you at short notice as required – this may be for biosecurity purposes (e.g., for fruit fly), or in relation to other events such as prescribed burns, bushfires, or floods.
Vinehealth also needs your current planting details on the Register to assist with tracing activities for biosecurity events, and to ensure requests for aggregated and deidentified planting data from the Register are the most accurate as possible, to facilitate enhanced industry and government decision making.
There are numerous methods an authorised person to an account can use to communicate contact detail or plantings detail changes to Vinehealth, including:
- Via the Grape Industry Kiosk using a valid email address – allowing access to view and amend records online.
- Via email at admin@vinehealth.com.au – stating the Grower number and vineyard number. You can also request we email you a PDF of the vineyard records for review once communicated changes have been made.
- Via phoning us on 08 8273 0550. An identification verification will be required.
- Via requesting a hardcopy of your Vineyard Record/s to be posted, for your review, updating and return.
Key points to know regarding updating records
- Only persons authorised to do so, can update details held in the Register for each account. If you are the Registered Owner, you must advise Vinehealth in writing of any people within your business or related to your business you’d like to grant the ability to view and amend your records. Vinehealth can also notify you of changes made to your account by your authorised users, at your request.
- Make Vinehealth part of your internal business systems. When making changes to your plantings, include a flag in your internal business systems to communicate changes to Vinehealth. In addition, if you are a business contact, please ensure you remember to hand the baton over to someone else before you leave, else there may be biosecurity or financial implications for the business if we are unable to make contact for a period of time.
- Contact and planting detail updates can be made at any time of the year.
Annual Vineyard Record review
If you do wait for your annual vineyard record review to make changes to the information held on the Register about your vineyard, we appreciate that it takes time to review your records. Our aim is to send you a copy of your records to review by early December each year, with a deadline to submit changes by 31 January. If you have no changes to make, we highly encourage you to use one of the methods above to advise us, so we know that the information held on the Register for your account is still current.
Key aspects you should focus your review on:
- Do we have a range of contact details for you? If Vinehealth had to contact your business in a timely manner, providing only a postal address means we cannot do this, and it may be to your detriment.
- Are you receiving information from Vinehealth via your currently preferred communication method? If you are still getting posted information when email would be better, we can change that upon your request.
- Do your planting records in the register match the maps supplied?
- A quick comparison of the total area of your planting records and estimated area under vine on the supplied maps will highlight variances. Have you either removed some plantings, or replanted and forgotten to advise Vinehealth? Note that the Register is required to list all vines in the ground, living or dead.
- Accurate planting records have a financial implication as the annual Notice of Assessment is generated from the planting information in the Register as at April 30 each year. To minimise Vinehealth staff having to potentially amend invoices already issued, we ask that planting details are updated by no later than 31 March so that processing such corrections do not take us away from our core activities.
- Have you removed all your vines? If you have undertaken complete vine removal, Vinehealth has a process you must complete to ensure we can remove you from the Register. This involves you advising us by phone or email of the vine removal, completing and returning the official ‘Grower Exit’ form you will be issued (recording the reason for and date of vine removal), and paying any debt outstanding on the account. Note that Vinehealth invoices in arrears and therefore part levy payment may still be required before you can be removed from the Register.
- Have you allocated your plantings to a land parcel? If you have more than one land parcel associated with your property, communicating which plantings are on which land parcels is a required step prior to a land sale progressing.
- Do you need your vineyard records to review in a different format? Give us a call to discuss options.