Lo­cal rum pro­duc­er An­gos­tu­ra is con­tin­u­ing its fo­cus on in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion as it sees "great po­ten­tial" in that area, says the com­pa­ny's chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer (COO) Ian Forbes.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian fol­low­ing An­gos­tu­ra's re­lease of a spe­cial rum in trib­ute to Cari­com's 50th an­niver­sary, Forbes shared in­sights in­to some of the com­pa­ny's plans for ex­pan­sion in the re­gion­al and glob­al are­na.

On the in­ter­na­tion­al front, he said, "That's an im­por­tant as­pect of what we want to fo­cus on so grow­ing our rums in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and ex­pand­ing our reach in­ter­na­tion­al­ly is our pri­ma­ry fo­cus."

Forbes not­ed that An­gos­tu­ra's ma­jor mar­kets in­ter­na­tion­al­ly are in Eu­rope, specif­i­cal­ly west­ern, cen­tral, and east­ern Eu­rope, as well as North Amer­i­ca, which he iden­ti­fied as the biggest mar­kets for rum.

"North Amer­i­ca is prob­a­bly the biggest mar­ket for rum glob­al­ly. So our pres­ence there is crit­i­cal, but our ar­eas of fo­cus are Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, in terms of the growth that we hope to achieve in the fu­ture."

He fur­ther not­ed that pen­e­trat­ing new emerg­ing mar­kets is crit­i­cal, not on­ly for An­gos­tu­ra, but al­so for many of its col­leagues in the Caribbean rum in­dus­try as that is where growth is like­ly to come from.

An­gos­tu­ra re­cent­ly signed an agree­ment to re-en­ter the Chi­nese mar­ket, re­flect­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al reach.

On this move, Forbes said, "So take Chi­na, for in­stance, where the GDP (gross do­mes­tic prod­uct) is in­creas­ing and where the earn­ing po­ten­tial of the av­er­age cit­i­zen is in­creas­ing. That is a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty. There are oth­er such mar­kets around the world, new and emerg­ing mar­kets, and those would be of in­ter­est to us."

Two weeks ago An­gos­tu­ra an­nounced a strate­gic dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ment to ex­port its glob­al award-win­ning prod­ucts to Chi­na.

The agree­ment is with Caribbean Com­mer­cial Man­age­ment (Hangzhou) Co Ltd, a sub­sidiary of First Caribbean Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, an es­tab­lished im­porter and ex­porter of Chi­nese goods in­to T&T and the wider Caribbean.

Forbes al­so cit­ed the African mar­kets as an­oth­er area of in­ter­est, as well, for An­gos­tu­ra as those too hold po­ten­tial av­enues to con­duct busi­ness.

On whether the mis­sion of An­gos­tu­ra is al­so to in­crease this coun­try's for­eign ex­change earn­ings, Forbes said he would put it this way, "Giv­en the fi­nite size of T&T, giv­en the fi­nite size even of the Caribbean re­gion, the on­ly place that we can grow sus­tain­ably is in the glob­al mar­ket and we look at glob­al rum op­por­tu­ni­ties and that's our main fo­cus."

Re­gard­ing chal­lenges in sourc­ing raw ma­te­ri­als, and whether An­gos­tu­ra is fac­ing ship­ping is­sues like oth­er en­ti­ties, Forbes ac­knowl­edged that all busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in to­day's eco­nom­ic space are fac­ing chal­lenges caused by geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts and oth­er fac­tors, which can­not be con­trolled. Sup­ply chain is­sues im­pact as­pects like freight prices.

"It's a chal­lenge for every busi­ness op­er­at­ing in the man­u­fac­tur­ing space in our re­gion and else­where. It's the chal­lenge of our times. Notwith­stand­ing that, I would say that we at An­gos­tu­ra are in dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es. The forces that are at work in our lines of busi­ness are dif­fer­ent for the beer in­dus­try ver­sus the rum in­dus­try. So we are cop­ing with our chal­lenges and I think we're cop­ing well and we hope to be able to re­main com­pet­i­tive for as long as pos­si­ble," Forbes said.

On whether an­oth­er spe­cial blend would be of­fered next year, Forbes said, "So this par­tic­u­lar rum, which is the Cari­com Trib­ute Rum, is in­deed a lim­it­ed ex­pres­sion. There will be a small num­ber of bot­tles avail­able through our Sol­era store, but it's some­what of a col­lec­tor's item. Next year, is go­ing to bring new and ex­cit­ing things in the world of rum and we con­tin­ue to con­tin­u­ous­ly in­no­vate so that we can keep our lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers in­ter­est­ed in An­gos­tu­ra as a very im­por­tant and trend­ing rum brand."

Grow­ing its Cari­com pres­ence

While An­gos­tu­ra has a pres­ence in Cari­com no­tably Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, and St Lu­cia, it is al­so look­ing to ex­pand else­where in the Caribbean, once the doors are open.

"Of course, in the Cari­com rum mar­ket is a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket be­cause every­one has a dis­tillery and a rum brand, but notwith­stand­ing that, we are present... some of our top mar­kets in Cari­com would be Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia, where some of our brands, par­tic­u­lar­ly White Oak and Black La­bel, do very, very well.

"In Bar­ba­dos, you would see some of the pre­mi­um rum brands, es­pe­cial­ly in the du­ty-free at the air­port, but we are spread through a few oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, but cer­tain­ly Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia are among our top ter­ri­to­ries," Forbes ex­plained.

An­gos­tu­ra al­so has a pres­ence in Guyana. How­ev­er, Forbes said the com­pa­ny is still build­ing the mar­ket there, es­pe­cial­ly for its pre­mi­um rums.

Look­ing ahead as it re­lates to the Cari­com mar­ket, Forbes said as long as the op­por­tu­ni­ty is there the rum and bit­ters pro­duc­er will ex­plore such ven­tur­ers.

"Cari­com is an im­por­tant mar­ket. It's a lev­el-play­ing field for all of the dis­tillers with­in the re­gion, and we in­tend to be present there," he added.

While there are oth­er no­table rum pro­duc­ers in the Caribbean, An­gos­tu­ra is not afraid of the com­pe­ti­tion.

"So among rum pro­duc­ers in the Caribbean, we are col­leagues in terms of ob­jec­tive­ly work­ing to­geth­er to fur­ther Caribbean rum. At the same time, we com­pete in each oth­er's mar­kets, and we com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

"Notwith­stand­ing that, we are con­vinced that there's enough mar­ket share and op­por­tu­ni­ty to go around for all pro­duc­ers. The rea­son for that is be­cause of the fact that rum is such a di­verse prod­uct that there's a taste pref­er­ence for every­one," Forbes said, re­it­er­at­ing that there's more than enough room in terms of glob­al rum for Caribbean pro­duc­ers.

Build­ing T&T's rum ap­petite

An­gos­tu­ra wants to"ex­cite" T&T about rum. In do­ing so Forbes said it's about fur­ther build­ing its brand lo­cal­ly.

"And when we say rum, we know we're ex­cit­ed about our stan­dard rums: White Oak; Black La­bel and For­res Park pun­cheon rum. That's fine. We're hap­py about that. We al­so want those who have a dis­cern­ing palate to be ex­cit­ed about our aged rums, which are our 1919, 1824, 1787 brands, as well as oth­er brands along with our lim­it­ed edi­tions and re­leas­es.

"That's what we want. We want Trinida­di­ans who have an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for rum to now recog­nise that there are new and trend­ing rums that we bring to mar­ket to de­vel­op a dis­cern­ing lo­cal mar­ket for aged rums," Forbes ex­plained.

In 2019 as part of An­gos­tu­ra’s srive to in­no­vate and keep up with cur­rent mar­ket trends, the com­pa­ny added a new flavour to its White Oak line: An­gos­tu­ra White Oak Sor­rel-Flavoured Rum.

With Christ­mas in a few months, will An­gos­tu­ra be un­veil­ing any new prod­ucts for the lo­cal mar­ket?

"I would say stay tuned. There's still time to do some­thing spe­cial," Forbes added.

In its 2023 fi­nan­cial year, An­gos­tu­ra de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $151.98 mil­lion, 4.64 per cent more than the $145.23 mil­lion it earned in 2022.The com­pa­ny gen­er­at­ed rev­enue of $1.05 bil­lion in 2023, com­pared to $1.02 bil­lion in 2022.