GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

An­gos­tu­ra is en­joy­ing healthy sales this Christ­mas sea­son, thanks to strate­gic price re­duc­tions that have res­onat­ed strong­ly with con­sumers.

An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Gary Hunt con­firmed that the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to low­er prices has been met with en­thu­si­asm, not­ing that cus­tomers al­ways wel­come re­lief at the check­out, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the fes­tive pe­ri­od.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing An­gos­tu­ra’s Wired for Suc­cess elec­tri­cal pro­gramme ex­e­cut­ed by the NESC Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute (NESC TI) which took place at the House of An­gos­tu­ra, Laven­tille yes­ter­day, Hunt ex­plained that both the sales and mar­ket­ing teams have worked seam­less­ly to en­sure the strat­e­gy trans­lat­ed in­to re­al gains, and the com­pa­ny is an­tic­i­pat­ing a strong hol­i­day per­for­mance.

“Sales have been go­ing good and the con­sumers al­ways wel­come a re­duc­tion in price. I think all our sales teams, our mar­ket­ing teams have been work­ing well and we’re look­ing for­ward to a re­al­ly good Christ­mas,” Hunt said.

He al­so ex­pects sales to keep the mo­men­tum for the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, em­pha­sis­ing that the Christ­mas sea­son is a crit­i­cal time for An­gos­tu­ra, and the da­ta col­lect­ed from the pe­ri­od would play a key role in shap­ing fu­ture de­ci­sions, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the com­pa­ny pre­pares for Car­ni­val 2026.

He de­scribed the ap­proach as “one step at a time,” high­light­ing that the com­pa­ny in­tends to use the re­sults of hol­i­day sales to guide its next moves.

“Let’s see what the da­ta brings back for Christ­mas and based on the re­sults and the da­ta, we will make de­ci­sions go­ing for­ward for the Car­ni­val,” Hunt ex­plained.

Be­yond pric­ing, An­gos­tu­ra’s ex­pan­sion in­to the ready-to-drink (RTD) cat­e­go­ry has al­so con­tributed to its sales mo­men­tum.

The launch of the 420 brand, aimed at Gen Z and mil­len­ni­al con­sumers, has al­ready gained sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion.

Hunt said the RTD sec­tor is one the com­pa­ny in­tends to in­vest in heav­i­ly, see­ing it as a growth mar­ket with long-term po­ten­tial.

“The new fam­i­ly of prod­ucts that caters large­ly to the Gen Z’s and the mil­len­ni­als are the RTD’s, our new en­trant in­to that cat­e­go­ry. The 420, which is in two flavours, has been get­ting a lot of sup­port and we think we see that as a sec­tor we want to par­tic­i­pate more in. So we have lots of big plans go­ing for­ward for the RTD sec­tor,” Hunt said.

Asked to give an up­date on the launch of Ca­roni Bit­ters by for­mer An­gos­tu­ra ex­ec­u­tive Vidia Dood­nath, the An­gos­tu­ra chair­man called for pa­tience, say­ing the “in the full­ness of time, we will come to the press.”

While sales re­main the im­me­di­ate fo­cus, Hunt al­so point­ed to An­gos­tu­ra’s broad­er com­mit­ment to cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

He ex­plained that the com­pa­ny’s youth em­pow­er­ment ini­tia­tives are de­signed not on­ly to give back to so­ci­ety but al­so to align with its busi­ness mod­el, cre­at­ing path­ways for fu­ture em­ploy­ment in ar­eas such as en­gi­neer­ing, chem­istry, ad­min­is­tra­tion, mar­ket­ing and sales.

Thir­ty peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in An­gos­tu­ra’s Wired for Suc­cess, a nine-week, elec­tri­cal pro­gramme that was ex­e­cut­ed by the NESC-TI.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic were in­vit­ed to sub­mit their ap­pli­ca­tions for the pro­gramme.