Bergrivier Estate makes wine the markets want. Getting it across borders was the hard part. Each destination has its own documentation, and a single mistake meant a rejected shipment and days of rework for a two-person export desk.
The approach
The estate built a library of validated document templates and used Gemini 3.5 to draft and cross-check paperwork against a per-market checklist. Its strength with large documents and structured data fit the job. A person still verifies every set before it’s submitted.
The wine was never the problem. The paperwork was. Now the paperwork mostly handles itself.
Pieter van Zyl, Export Manager
The payoff wasn’t just fewer rejections. Freed from rework, the export desk had time to chase new buyers — the work that actually grows the business.
South African context
Personal information in trade documents is handled under POPIA, kept in the estate’s own systems. The AI assists with structure and checks; it doesn’t store the records.
