GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd is ac­cel­er­at­ing its push on­to the glob­al stage, strength­en­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al foot­print while mod­ernising op­er­a­tions and prod­uct of­fer­ings to se­cure sus­tain­able growth for decades to come.

Speak­ing in a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view, chair­man Gary Hunt told Guardian Me­dia, “We are ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing plans across sev­er­al re­gions, and many of these ini­tia­tives will come to fruition this year,” sig­nalling what he de­scribed as an ex­cit­ing pe­ri­od ahead for the 202-year-old com­pa­ny.

A key pil­lar of An­gos­tu­ra’s glob­al strat­e­gy is Africa, where the com­pa­ny sees sig­nif­i­cant un­tapped po­ten­tial for its bit­ters, rums and oth­er bev­er­age prod­ucts.

Hunt con­firmed that An­gos­tu­ra is look­ing at Ghana, South Africa and Botswana, while al­so ex­plor­ing en­try in­to new mar­kets in Ethiopia.

“We have the whole con­ti­nent that we are look­ing at,” he said adding, “We are ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing plans in that re­gion, and yes, they will come to fruition this year.”

He al­so point­ed to the com­pa­ny’s un­par­al­leled glob­al suc­cess with An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters as a blue­print for fu­ture ex­pan­sion.

“We have a very good pen­e­tra­tion of bit­ters in Man­hat­tan and four bor­ough ar­eas and we have a project that we are con­sid­er­ing now to bring to the board so that our rums could fol­low. In every sin­gle bar in Man­hat­tan, with­out ex­cep­tion, you can find An­gos­tu­ra bit­ters,” Hunt said, not­ing, “That kind of pen­e­tra­tion gives us con­fi­dence as we look at how our rums can fol­low the same path.”

While glob­al ex­pan­sion re­mains a head­line pri­or­i­ty, Hunt stressed that An­gos­tu­ra’s out­ward push is firm­ly sup­port­ed by in­ter­nal re­form.

Over the past four months, the com­pa­ny has been close­ly ex­am­in­ing its op­er­a­tions to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty.

“As a com­pa­ny, we con­tin­ue to ex­plore ef­fi­cien­cy, we con­tin­ue to ex­plore pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and there­by prof­its,” Hunt said. “We are look­ing close­ly at op­er­a­tions and op­ti­mis­ing in all ar­eas.”

These ef­forts, he said, would con­tin­ue in­to 2026 as An­gos­tu­ra po­si­tions it­self to with­stand ex­ter­nal pres­sures such as ris­ing costs and chang­ing reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ments.

“We’ve had a chal­lenge in the old pack­ag­ing pre­vi­ous that it was not ful­ly sus­tain­able and that was a bar­ri­er for the prod­ucts en­ter­ing in­to the UK mar­ket, es­pe­cial­ly like the gro­cery chains and so on. So now we have been able to over­come that. So there’s a planned trip to the UK very soon where we’re go­ing to be en­gag­ing stake­hold­ers in that mar­ket to get the prod­ucts on their shelves,” Hunt ex­plained.

Oth­er plans for 2026

Hunt dis­closed that the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly ad­dress­ing cer­tain ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenges.

“We have some com­pet­ing prod­ucts who are in the mar­ket con­trary to the ex­ist­ing laws, which we are cor­rect­ing. We are look­ing at oth­er fa­cil­i­ta­tion through trade. Like, for ex­am­ple, we’re pur­su­ing a du­ty-free con­ces­sion for In­dia. Re­cent­ly, they award­ed Mau­ri­tius, which is with a sim­i­lar dy­nam­ic, sim­i­lar met­rics, to Trinidad and To­ba­go, du­ty-free for all their prod­ucts in­to In­dia so we are pur­su­ing that. That will be a big, big win be­cause our prod­ucts at the mo­ment has a 130 per cent ex­cise du­ty when it ar­rives in­to In­dia. So, our price points will be bet­ter. It will al­so in­crease our prof­it mar­gins, etc,” Hunt ex­plained.

He fur­ther em­pha­sised that when in­dige­nous prod­ucts from T&T are sub­ject­ed to tax­es while oth­er prod­ucts en­ter the mar­ket un­taxed—due to per­ceived ad­min­is­tra­tive loop­holes—An­gos­tu­ra, as a re­spon­si­ble busi­ness, must ad­dress the is­sue and bring it to the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ties.

“This mat­ter is cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, and we ex­pect a re­sponse very soon. One thing I can say is that the gov­ern­ment is very re­spon­sive and very fa­cil­i­ta­tive to trade and in­vest­ment and the econ­o­my,” Hunt added.

Cap­tur­ing the next gen­er­a­tion with RTDs

In­no­va­tion in prod­uct de­vel­op­ment is an­oth­er cor­ner­stone of An­gos­tu­ra’s strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly as con­sumer pref­er­ences shift to­ward con­ve­nience and new for­mats. Hunt said the com­pa­ny is plac­ing in­creased em­pha­sis on the ready-to-drink (RTD) seg­ment, which has proven es­pe­cial­ly at­trac­tive to Gen Z and mil­len­ni­al con­sumers.

“The RTD seg­ment is the ap­peal­ing for­mat for with the Gen Z and the mil­len­ni­als,” he said.

An­gos­tu­ra is prepar­ing to launch sev­er­al new RTD prod­ucts, with one sched­uled for re­lease on the 20th of this month.

Hunt ex­pressed con­fi­dence that these new of­fer­ings will res­onate strong­ly with con­sumers.

“We think these prod­ucts are go­ing to be big hits,” he said, adding that in­vi­ta­tions to the of­fi­cial launch­es will be is­sued soon.

Mod­ernising the brand while ho­n­our­ing her­itage

As An­gos­tu­ra en­ters its 202nd year, the com­pa­ny is al­so un­der­tak­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of its brand­ing to en­sure it re­mains rel­e­vant in a com­pet­i­tive glob­al mar­ket­place.

Hunt said the but­ter­fly—long as­so­ci­at­ed with An­gos­tu­ra—is be­ing for­malised as an icon­ic sym­bol across its prod­uct lines, par­tic­u­lar­ly its rums and pre­mi­um of­fer­ings.

“The com­pa­ny has over time, you know, been us­ing the but­ter­fly, but we need to for­malise our brand­ing. We need to have a play­book that the en­tire com­pa­ny could work with, not just Trinidad and To­ba­go, but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. And we are look­ing at the but­ter­fly as our icon­ic sym­bol for the com­pa­ny, es­pe­cial­ly with our rums and oth­er prod­ucts,” Hunt ex­plained.

The but­ter­fly sym­bol is deeply root­ed in An­gos­tu­ra’s his­to­ry.

He not­ed that in the days of sug­ar plan­ta­tions, farm­ers re­lied on na­ture rather than sci­ence to de­ter­mine the best time to har­vest sug­ar cane as when but­ter­flies ap­peared in the fields, it sig­nalled that sug­ar lev­els were at their peak.

“Na­ture was telling them it was time to har­vest for the high­est yield,” Hunt said. “That is the sto­ry of the but­ter­fly with An­gos­tu­ra.”

The but­ter­fly has al­ready been in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the repack­ag­ing of An­gos­tu­ra’s pre­mi­um rums, which now fea­ture ful­ly sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing.

While the but­ter­fly is cur­rent­ly used at the prod­uct lev­el rather than as part of An­gos­tu­ra’s cor­po­rate brand­ing, Hunt said the com­pa­ny is re­view­ing its en­tire brand­ing port­fo­lio as part of its long-term mod­erni­sa­tion strat­e­gy.

“We have last­ed 201 years, and now we are in year num­ber 202,” he said. “We have to plan for the fu­ture. We have to en­sure for the gen­er­a­tions who will in­her­it our work that we’ve left a rel­e­vant and ex­cit­ing plat­form that they could build on.”

Ex­ports, prof­its and the An­gos­tu­ra 2.0x3 vi­sion

Ex­ports re­main a crit­i­cal dri­ver of An­gos­tu­ra’s rev­enue, ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 55 per cent of its to­tal in­come, with the lo­cal mar­ket con­tribut­ing the re­main­ing 45 per cent. Hunt said the com­pa­ny in­tends to main­tain and strength­en that ex­port-led bal­ance.

More am­bi­tious­ly, he re­it­er­at­ed his “An­gos­tu­ra 2.0x3” vi­sion, first an­nounced at his in­au­gur­al an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing as chair­man.

“To de­code that, it means dou­ble our rev­enue and triple our prof­its by the year 2028. We are look­ing good. I think our share­hold­ers would be ex­cit­ed with our fi­nan­cial re­sults for 2025. Be­cause as you know, we face head­winds with large ex­cise du­ty in­creas­es and we have some oth­er in­creas­es that we are fac­ing at the mo­ment in our sup­ply and pro­duc­tion and we are ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing those is­sues to get bet­ter prices, low­er costs of pro­duc­tion, in­crease our mar­gins, etc,” Hunt added.

Car­ni­val con­fi­dence

On the home front, Hunt ex­pressed op­ti­mism about the Car­ni­val sea­son, not­ing that An­gos­tu­ra has held prices steady and de­ployed its sales teams to en­sure strong mar­ket cov­er­age.

“We ex­pect a good sea­son,” he said. “We have the best prod­ucts, the best price, and a new mar­ket­ing team that will be com­ing in to work with us. So, there’s a lev­el of dy­namism that is be­ing in­ject­ed in­to the com­pa­ny that I think our share­hold­ers, our stake­hold­ers, our cus­tomers will be very ex­cit­ed about.”

Hunt reaf­firmed An­gos­tu­ra’s role as a cul­tur­al am­bas­sador for T&T not­ing, “Wher­ev­er An­gos­tu­ra prod­ucts go, they take the pan, the cul­ture, the Car­ni­val, the food, It is soft diplo­ma­cy for the coun­try, and it is an icon­ic com­pa­ny that I be­lieve should re­main in the pat­ri­mo­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

An­gos­tu­ra’s largest share­hold­ers are Rumpro Com­pa­ny Ltd, with 44.97 per cent of the com­pa­ny, and Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, which holds 29.92 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra. Rumpro is owned by CL Fi­nan­cial, which is un­der the con­trol of liq­uida­tors ap­point­ed by the pre­vi­ous min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, in 2017.