GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar

@guardian.co.tt

An­gos­tu­ra has of­fi­cial­ly marked its re-en­try in­to the In­di­an mar­ket with a ship­ment val­ued at US $80,000, sig­nalling what the com­pa­ny en­vi­sions as a ma­jor ex­pan­sion in­to one of the world’s fastest-grow­ing con­sumer mar­kets.

Speak­ing at the event which took place at the com­pa­ny’s ware­house in Laven­tille yes­ter­day, chair­man of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd, Gary Hunt, de­scribed the move as “the start of big things.”

Hunt em­pha­sised that this ini­tial ship­ment is sym­bol­ic, rep­re­sent­ing An­gos­tu­ra’s com­mit­ment to build­ing a strong pres­ence in In­dia.

“We are ex­treme­ly de­light­ed to an­nounce An­gos­tu­ra’s re-en­try in­to the In­di­an mar­ket with our very icon­ic An­gos­tu­ra Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters and Or­ange Bit­ters, along­side An­gos­tu­ra’s five-year old rum. This re­turn fol­lows an ab­sence of near­ly 11 years. Our pres­ence here to­day sig­nals not on­ly re­silience, but a very strate­gic glob­al in­tent,” he ex­plained.

This, he added, rep­re­sents the first phase of a care­ful­ly struc­tured long-term growth strat­e­gy, be­gin­ning with three key In­di­an provinces, Del­hi, Kar­nata­ka and Ma­ha­rash­tra, de­signed to build a sus­tain­able en­dur­ing foot­print in one of the world’s most dy­nam­ic spir­its mar­ket.

“In­dia, is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing rapid growth, dri­ven by an ex­pand­ing mid­dle class and a new gen­er­a­tion of dis­cern­ing con­sumers who val­ue au­then­tic­i­ty, her­itage and qual­i­ty. An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters al­ready en­joy strong recog­ni­tion and re­spect among In­dia’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty pro­fes­sion­als, bar­tenders and mixol­o­gists. Our bit­ters, more ap­pro­pri­ate­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bit­ters, are re­gard­ed as an es­sen­tial bar sta­ple,” Hunt stat­ed.

Be­yond mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty, this ex­pan­sion, he not­ed, speaks to some­thing very much larg­er as every bot­tle of An­gos­tu­ra ex­ports car­ries with it the sto­ry of T&T, its crafts­man­ship, cul­ture and ex­cel­lence.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, who al­so spoke, agreed that An­gos­tu­ra con­tin­ues to demon­strate lead­er­ship and dri­ve in ex­pand­ing its ex­port reach and mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion, re­in­forc­ing T&T’s rep­u­ta­tion as a pro­duc­er of pre­mi­um qual­i­ty prod­ucts.

“This au­gurs well for the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the plans of this gov­ern­ment. This gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to chang­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of the econ­o­my and im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of lives of all of our cit­i­zens. This ne­ces­si­tates a strate­gic ap­proach to the de­vel­op­ment of the non-en­er­gy sec­tor,” the min­is­ter said.

He not­ed that at present, the coun­try’s ex­port port­fo­lio is heav­i­ly weight­ed to­ward en­er­gy-re­lat­ed prod­ucts, which ac­count for 80 per cent, while non-en­er­gy ex­ports make up on­ly 20 per cent.

As such, Ma­haraj re­it­er­at­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s five-year strate­gic plan aims to achieve a bal­anced 50-50 split, de­ter­mined to reach this goal even be­fore the five-year mark, adding that An­gos­tu­ra, as a key play­er in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, has an im­por­tant role to play in dri­ving this trans­for­ma­tion and help­ing di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.