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Looks like you simply gave a favour to privately owned wine importers who's shares you couldn't buy?

To a degree, but each wine exporter has a certain degree of capacity to import wine e.g., warehouses, staff, and trucks. This all can be be scaled up, but only after some time has elapsed and additional capital being placed at risk.

It's reasonable to assume that these folks may have significantly reduced NZ's imports of SA wine for at least a while.

In the New Zealand of the early 1980s one couldn't just go and import something you needed a govt import licence, in many cases these had been handed down over generations and the number in any one market were strictly limited.

The conservative govt that had encouraged the whole Springbok tour in 81 also was the same govt that so mismanaged the economy that it fell apart in 84, they were replaced by a left wing govt that brought in free trade and scrapped all these licensed etc (not the usual left/right narrative)

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