Southern Skies to fund CyberCellar turnaround

Southern Skies Investment Holdings has signed on to provide funding and business expertise to assist CyberCellar return to profitability and then scale to capitalise on the wine e-commerce opportunity. This was announced on Monday by Andrew Douglas, group managing director for Southern Skies.

Founded in 1998, CyberCellar is South Africa’s oldest wine e-commerce retailer. Publik, which started as a Cape Town bar in 2013, took ownership in 2019 as part of a deal which saw tech business holding company Silvertree providing capital and resources.

Publik also took on a wholesaler role but recently shut down these activities and is currently going through business rescue with the aim of emerging as a purely e-commerce focused entity. The funding from Southern Skies is through a post-commencement financing loan agreement with Publik.

Amongst other companies, Southern Skies owns Wine.co.za, CellarDirect and recently launched wine industry intelligence platform Vintelligence.