SAWIS registration and monthly returns: what South African wine cellars must record and submit

If you crush grapes, buy bulk wine, bottle for others or export, SAWIS (SA Wine Industry Information and Systems NPC) wants to hear from you every month. That isn’t a voluntary industry survey: it’s a statutory measure made by the Minister of Agriculture under the Marketing of Agricultural Products Act, 1996 (Act No. 47 of 1996). The current version is Notice 3714 of 2025, published in Government Gazette No. 53901 on 24 December 2025. It came into operation on 1 January 2026 and runs until 31 December 2029.

This guide sets out what the notice actually says: who must register, which records you must keep, when the returns are due, which levies you pay through SAWIS, and what the Act says about non-compliance.

Who must register with SAWIS

Clause 5 of the notice is short: all bottlers, grape producers, grape juice producers, wine exporters, wine producers and wine traders shall register with SAWIS. The definitions decide which box you fall into:

• Wine producer: any person who crushes grapes and who is not registered as a wine trader.
• Wine trader: any person not registered as a wine producer who buys or otherwise acquires grapes, or drinking wine, industrial wine, distilling wine or wine spirit in bulk (more than five litres) from a wine producer.
• Grape producer: any producer of grapes intended for drinking, industrial or distilling wine.
• Bottler: anyone who bottles, stabilises, blends, filters, labels or stores wine on behalf of wine producers or traders, and isn’t registered as one of them.
• Wine exporter: anyone who exports drinking wine and isn’t registered as a wine producer or trader.

You register as either a wine producer or a wine trader, never both. A wine farm that grows its own grapes and makes its own wine registers twice: as a grape producer and as a wine producer. The application must be made within 30 days of becoming one of these parties, on a SAWIS form, by post, by hand at SAWIS in Paarl, or electronically on sawisonline.co.za.

What records you must keep

Clause 6 is the returns measure. Everyone in the list above, except grape juice producers, must keep the records and render the returns SAWIS requires about:

• vines;
• grapes; and
• grape juice, grape juice concentrate, drinking wine, industrial wine, distilling wine and wine spirit produced, received, stored, sold, exported or otherwise utilised.

The records must be kept electronically on a computer system or manually in ink in a record book, at your registered premises, for at least three years (Notice 3714 of 2025, clause 6(3)).

Read that list again and it describes a full stock movement ledger: what came in (grapes by weight, bulk wine bought), what was made, what is in the cellar, and what left — sold, exported, distilled or lost. The exact layout of each return is set by SAWIS on its own forms, so check the current form with SAWIS rather than relying on an old template.

The deadline: 15 days after month-end

Returns are rendered on forms obtainable free of charge from SAWIS, on paper or electronically (including sawisonline.co.za), within 15 days after the end of each calendar month. In practice that means the October return is due by 15 November, the November return by 15 December, and so on — including the busy harvest months, when intake changes every day.

The notice also states that information obtained is dealt with confidentially, and that no client-specific information is released without the consent of the party concerned. The industry statistics SAWIS publishes are built from these individual returns.

Levies collected through SAWIS in 2026

The same notice continues several levies, collected by SAWIS on behalf of South Africa Wine NPC. For the period 1 January to 31 December 2026:

• Research, development and information levy: R70.63 per ton of grapes, 10.09 cents per litre of grape juice concentrate (at 17.4 °Balling) and 10.09 cents per litre of drinking wine. A wine producer pays it on drinking wine packaged in containers of 5 litres or less; a wine trader pays it on grapes and on bulk concentrate and drinking wine acquired from a wine producer.
• Export levy (wine export generic promotion levy), paid by the exporter: 17.94 c/L for certified bulk export wine, 21.05 c/L for certified packaged export wine and 17.18 c/L for uncertified export wine.
• Brandy levy: 3.48 c/L at 10% alcohol by volume on distilling wine and wine spirit.

The levies are payable not later than 60 days after the month of delivery (or, for the export levy, the month of export), by electronic transfer to the account SAWIS provides. The rates rise each year to 2029 and are listed in the Gazette notice.

What happens if you don’t comply

Section 24 of the Marketing of Agricultural Products Act makes it an offence to contravene or fail to comply with any statutory measure established under the Act. On a first conviction the penalty is a fine or imprisonment of up to two years; on a second or later conviction, a fine or imprisonment of up to five years.

Common mistakes

• Registering as a grape producer only, when you also crush and should be registered as a wine producer.
• Leaving the harvest-month returns until the cellar is quiet, instead of within 15 days of month-end.
• Keeping intake on weighbridge slips and cellar volumes in a separate notebook, so the return has to be reconstructed from memory.
• Losing track of bulk wine sold to a trader, or wine sent to a bottler, which then shows up in their return but not in yours.
• Treating levies as a once-a-year item instead of a 60-day obligation.
• Throwing records away before three years have passed.

Keeping the underlying records in one place

The return is only as good as the ledger behind it. GrapeFlow keeps the records your SAWIS returns are compiled from — grape intake per block, lots and tank volumes, blends, losses, bottling and stock — so the month’s movements are already on one screen when the 15th comes round. It doesn’t submit anything to SAWIS and isn’t affiliated with SAWIS: filing the return stays with you.

If you also certify wine under the Wine of Origin scheme, the press register, production sheets and wine record required there are a separate set of obligations under the Liquor Products Act, 1989, with their own deadlines.