Portavin is pleased to announce that their founder and chairman Mike Davies has been named a regional finalist in the 2016 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year awards. Mike joins other outstanding entrepreneurs from across Australia who will compete for the ultimate prize of being named 2016 Australian EY Entrepreneur of the Year.

While at agricultural college studying wine making, Mike Davies wrote a thesis on mobile wine bottling. This was the inspiration for Portavin, which he founded in 1989. Portavin now operates one mobile line and five static bottling sites close to transport hubs across Australia, and is Australasia’s largest independent wine services provider.

Portavin provides a complete tank-to-shelf solution including wine bottling and packaging, dry goods supply, technical & oenological laboratory services, wine warehousing & logistics, airline wine services and wine export services. Portavin today bottles 10% of wine packaged in Australia, equating to more than 80 million bottles per year for over 800 wineries.

Mike Davies said the nomination came out-of-the-blue and is a fantastic yet unexpected honour.

“To be nominated for such a prestigious award has been a wonderful experience for me personally but Portavin would not be where it is today without the contribution from an outstanding team of people that have supported my vision and worked tirelessly to achieve our goals,” Mike said.

“It is also a great stamp of recognition for the wine industry, an industry that has being doing it very hard for a long time,” he said.

Mike will join his fellow finalists representing Western Australia at the regional awards ceremony this Thursday 25 August in Perth where the regional winners will be announced.