Winery looks to nitrogen bottling solution

A south-west Western Australian wine bottling facility is looking to switch to nitrogen gas so it can continue its operations.

The Capel Vale Winery usually uses carbon dioxide to bottle wine for 100 WA wineries, but has been unable to source any CO2, because it is no longer being produced, due to the gas shortage.

The winery has now opted to use nitrogen gas which costs three times as much.

Site manager Keith Warrick says he is negotiating with his supplier, working out the logistics to get the nitrogen to the south-west.

"They have at least had somebody on site that's determined the appropriate location for the bulk vessel, the amount of engineering that's going to be required to get it up and running," he said.

"[If] all of those things come together we should arrive at a continued operation with the only transition being a change from CO2 to nitrogen."