An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The biggest chal­lenge for Carib Brew­ery is for­eign ex­change, which con­tin­ues to af­fect many busi­ness­es in the coun­try.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of in­ter­na­tion­al & busi­ness de­vel­op­ment at Carib Brew­ery, Adri­an Sab­ga spoke to the me­dia af­ter col­lect­ing Carib Brew­ery's top In­ter­na­tion­al­ly Known…T&T-Owned Com­pa­ny of the Year award, at the 2023 T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try of Com­merce Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) on Thurs­day night.

Sab­ga said the brew­ery has to im­port a sig­nif­i­cant amount of its raw ma­te­ri­als, which are not read­i­ly sourced in TT. This means there is a re­quire­ment for for­eign ex­change to con­tin­ue run­ning the busi­ness.

Asked what mech­a­nisms are be­ing put in place to deal with the is­sue, Sab­ga said sup­ply­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets aids Carib Brew­ery in gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change, but not to ful­ly sup­ply their de­mand. As a re­sult, it comes down to choos­ing the im­por­tant items to utili­tise its US cur­ren­cy.

“It is a ma­jor con­cern; it is some­thing that we have at the fore­front of our busi­ness, day in and day out. We are 50 per cent re­liant now on US cur­ren­cy. And that 50 per cent is what's re­quired to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing our busi­ness,” Sab­ga dis­closed.

He gave in­sight in­to what projects the brew­ery com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly un­der­tak­ing to re­duce its de­mand for for­eign ex­change.

Sab­ga said Carib Brew­ery is look­ing to utilise cas­sa­va as a sub­sti­tute with­in its brew­ing process.

“That can as­sist, and aid lo­cal farm­ers and us­ing cas­sa­va is a project we're work­ing on right now. It's go­ing to take some time, but it's some­thing that gets us very ex­cit­ed. It's al­so part and par­cel of our ma­jor sus­tain­abil­i­ty items. We are al­so look­ing at oth­er ways of sub­sti­tut­ing our in­puts for lo­cal­ly sourced items. As I said, qual­i­ty is num­ber one. So, it's been done be­fore, and we think we could repli­cate that here in Trinidad,” he re­vealed.

Speak­ing about the award, Sab­ga said it was 70 years in the mak­ing, adding the brand in­tends to build on its suc­cess by push­ing fur­ther in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

“Truth be told, there's some­thing that comes with hav­ing a pow­er­ful man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny with­in Trinidad. And it's some­thing we want to con­tin­ue to build up­on as we em­ploy more and more lo­cals, as we up­skill them with tools and man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties. It's a skill set and it's some­thing you want to con­tin­ue to ex­pand on and grow even more so in the fu­ture glob­al mar­kets."

The brand is cur­rent­ly in 41 coun­tries but is aim­ing to break in­to new mar­kets.

“We are ex­plor­ing Eu­rope now to a large de­gree. We're look­ing at man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties with­in the Unit­ed King­dom. The com­pa­ny al­ready man­u­fac­tures in Greece. We have al­so just start­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing in Cana­da and this is some­thing we want to build up­on in the fu­ture. But we have to do so care­ful­ly. The qual­i­ty of our brand is para­mount and that's some­thing we're go­ing to con­tin­ue to build up­on in the fu­ture,” Sab­ga added.