“The word Caribbean does not ex­ist with­out Carib in front of it.”

So said Antron Forte the cat­e­go­ry man­ag­er-Beer, Stout and Cider at Carib Brew­ery Ltd dur­ing an in­ter­view this week with the Busi­ness Guardian mag­a­zine.

But to Carib, this phrase is not just a wit­ty play on words.

The com­pa­ny’s thrust to be­come a glob­al brand is based on pro­mot­ing the Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence.

Dur­ing our 25-minute in­ter­view with Forte, he used the word “Caribbean” no few­er than 28 times.

As an ex­am­ple of Carib’s com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing the Caribbean, two Fri­days ago the com­pa­ny pre­mièred its song “Can You Feel It” which was per­formed by Trinida­di­an so­ca artiste Ker­win Du Bois and Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Shenseea (Chin­sea Lee).

The video was shot in the Ba­hamas and al­so fea­tured Jabs Jabs from Grena­da.

But the oth­er is­lands were al­so rep­re­sent­ed in the video with their flags be­ing fea­tured.

“I think we pro­duced a mu­sic video that show­cas­es the Caribbean in its glo­ry. It show­cas­es what we are very proud of and that is what we want­ed, that con­nec­tion with Carib to be,” Forte said.

“It is re­al­ly cel­e­brat­ing the Caribbean and that is why you would have seen us shoot that com­mer­cial be­cause Carib in its DNA is about cel­e­brat­ing the Caribbean, about fun, about vibes, about en­er­gy, about colour, so for us we found no oth­er way to cel­e­brate the brand but to do it in that style of mu­sic, show­cas­ing the Caribbean in its glo­ry,” he said.

One of the ma­jor talk­ing points of the video was the cameo by US record ex­ec­u­tive DJ Khaled (Khaled Mo­hamed Khaled).

Forte said Khaled was se­lect­ed be­cause of his love of the Caribbean.

This video was just one of sev­er­al ini­tia­tives that Carib has launched re­cent­ly as a way to ho­n­our its flag­ship prod­uct Carib beer which cel­e­brat­ed its 70th-an­niver­sary last year.

“We were ac­tu­al­ly think­ing of ways that we could cel­e­brate 70 years be­cause it is a mile­stone for us and a lot of peo­ple don’t know that in 1950 Carib was one of the first brands that was pro­duced here at Carib Brew­ery. So we were plan­ning the best way to cre­ate that lev­el of en­er­gy and ex­cite­ment but of course, the pan­dem­ic came,” Forte said.

Forte said over the last 18 months the com­pa­ny had been work­ing to­wards build­ing what is be­ing seen to­day.

This in­cludes the re-brand­ing of the Carib Beer lo­go, Forte said.

“Peo­ple al­ways rep­re­sent the Caribbean with a palm tree or a co­conut tree and we want­ed to de­vel­op a sym­bol or an icon that would re­al­ly sig­ni­fy the brand Carib and the Caribbean as be­ing one. So with the new la­bel we in­tro­duced a sym­bol to the top or what we call our Caribbean icon, it is made up of a shield that has a few oth­er sym­bols on it,” Forte said.

The sym­bols in­clude birds, the ocean, the sun rays, and the north star, Forte said.

Forte said the birds rep­re­sent that land is near­by.

“So when fish­er­men see birds they know that land is close,” Forte said.

“There’s the ocean or the wa­ter which brings us to­geth­er but al­so sep­a­rates us. There are the rays in the back of the shield, the sun rays you know in the Caribbean the beau­ty and the sun­light is what gives us life, and then, of course, there is a star and the star is the north star which is the first star that we see when we look up in­to the sky in the evening,” he said.

Forte said this new lo­go is not a port­fo­lio icon that you are go­ing to see for Carib Brew­ery prod­ucts but rather will on­ly be fea­tured on the Carib lager beer, the Carib Pil­sner, a new vari­ant beer, and a re-brand­ed old-time favourite.

The new vari­ant is the Carib Blue.

And if you have so­cial me­dia you most like­ly have seen the blue bot­tle by now.

Forte said the feed­back re­ceived so far from cus­tomers has been “very hum­bling.”

“We just can’t seem to pro­duce enough, peo­ple are go­ing crazy try­ing it. The truth is in de­vel­op­ing Carib Blue we want­ed to re­al­ly pay trib­ute to the main­stream lager beer,” Forte said.

Forte said the Carib Blue has six per cent al­co­hol and is made with the “finest malt and hops that we could find.”

“Our head of brew­ing re­al­ly he and his team took the time to put their art in­to de­vel­op­ing such an amaz­ing liq­uid so the feed­back has been re­al­ly pos­i­tive. We just can’t seem to make enough be­cause peo­ple are want­i­ng it, they are try­ing it, they are lov­ing it. It is so smooth, it is very, very smooth and very drink­able. We have a word we call ses­sion­able,” he said.

“Ses­sion­able” is a term used to mean the beer eas­i­ly drink­able and re­fresh­ing.

The re­brand­ed old-time favourite is the Carib Mal­ta.

Or the drink for­mer­ly known as the Mal­ta Carib.

“Mal­ta Carib is back in­to the fold so it is now part of the fam­i­ly as Carib Mal­ta,” Forte said.

Forte said Carib is dis­trib­uted in over 33 coun­tries and has four brew­eries.

“So while every­body knows T&T for Carib Brew­ery, there is Carib Brew­ery Grena­da, there is Carib Brew­ery St Kitts, and most re­cent­ly Carib Brew­ery USA,” he said.

Forte said Carib Brew­ery USA lo­cat­ed at Cape Canaver­al, Flori­da will help the com­pa­ny with its plans to make its name glob­al­ly.

That brew­ery, Forte said, was orig­i­nal­ly the Flori­da beer com­pa­ny that has been tran­si­tioned now to Carib Beer USA.

Mack­e­son, Shandy and Caribe along with the Carib prod­ucts will be pro­duced there.

“We want to make sure that from a world stage whether it be the di­as­po­ra, or new drinkers with­in North Amer­i­can and be­yond they have fresh­ly brewed beer and they get the best of the ex­pe­ri­ence of the Caribbean,” he said.

Bars in T&T are sched­uled to re­open next week as a re­sult of the lift­ing of re­stric­tions to help stop the spread of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Forte said Carib is look­ing for­ward to this re­open­ing of bars.

“We have re­al­ly tried our best to sup­port those bar own­ers and their staff be­cause we un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult the last few months have been,” he said.

Forte said many bars have had to shut their doors per­ma­nent­ly.

“So you are not sure if your favourite wa­ter­ing hole will be opened come No­vem­ber 1 and so for us it has re­al­ly been try­ing to sup­port them, try­ing to en­sure that we can look at our mod­els as it re­lates to the su­per­mar­ket and en­sure that they are al­so sup­port­ed be­cause that was the one op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to sell our prod­uct,” Forte said.

“But al­so we had to be cog­nisant that the pan­dem­ic had a dif­fer­ent method of think­ing for con­sumers. We had to be very clear and very con­scious that one, we did the right thing, and two we of­fered val­ue be­cause peo­ple’s dis­pos­able in­come has been re­duced sig­nif­i­cant­ly and those who are fac­ing un­em­ploy­ment are far worse,” he said.

As a re­sult of this Forte said Carib en­sured that had qual­i­ty prod­ucts that were de­liv­ered on time.

“We con­tin­ue to di­ver­si­fy our port­fo­lio so that peo­ple can en­joy that per­fect drink be­cause our port­fo­lio is very wide at Carib Brew­ery and again we have some­thing for every­one,” he said.

Forte said a cou­ple of weeks ago Carib had an in­ter­nal launch with its 700-plus em­ploy­ees which he de­scribed as “eu­phor­ic.”

“Next cou­ple of months in­to 2022 we want to cel­e­brate life, we want to make sure our prod­ucts are al­ways avail­able, we want to con­tin­ue to work with stake­hold­ers to en­sure that we are all safe and we con­tin­ue to sup­ply both our su­per­mar­kets as well as our bars and we just want to con­tin­ue to en­sure that mov­ing for­ward we can get through this pan­dem­ic in a pos­i­tive man­ner and we can con­tin­ue to build Carib beer with­in the world,” Forte said.

“Our re­brand, our cel­e­bra­tion is us get­ting ready to be on that world stage with our brands, to stand up with in­ter­na­tion­al brands every­where so that is why we ren­o­vat­ed our look, that is why we con­tin­ue to build com­mu­ni­ca­tion that shows the Caribbean, and that is why we con­tin­ue to en­sure that we al­ways set the bar very high in terms of our ex­e­cu­tion,” he said.