PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Crick­et has paved the way for Carib beer to en­ter the In­dia mar­ket.

CEO of the ANSA McAL Group An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III said the sport was key to the de­vel­op­ment of part­ner­ship be­tween ANSA McAL and Globus Spir­its Ltd which was an­nounced last month.

“For a while now, we have recog­nised that our bev­er­age brands and par­tic­u­lar­ly Carib via crick­et is some­thing which is very much known. It is a brand that has quite a bit of re­call and aware­ness in the In­di­an mar­ket. We have been search­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties of how to se­cure a sup­ply chain in­to that mar­ket, in­to In­dia,” said Sab­ga at the group’s stock­bro­kers’ meet­ing yes­ter­day at the Tatil Build­ing in St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

He said the com­pa­ny did its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to op­tions to en­ter the mar­ket and even­tu­al­ly found a part­ner suit­able to bring the brand to the South Asian coun­try.

“We were able to se­cure a part­ner­ship with a fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­er of al­co­hol and oth­er prod­ucts in the In­di­an mar­ket. This part­ner is Globus,” said Sab­ga.

“We’ve en­tered in­to a joint ven­ture agree­ment which would see us es­tab­lish a joint ven­ture. That joint ven­ture will con­tract brew­ing, pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in In­dia. It’s some­thing we’re very ex­cit­ed about. It is a very large mar­ket.”

ANSA McAL an­nounced the part­ner­ship with Globus on April 8.

The group’s CEO said that sim­i­lar dis­tri­b­u­tion deals had found suc­cess in Cana­da and Greece and as such he was con­fi­dent the brand would do well in the In­di­an mar­ket.

“It’s a mar­ket that we see that presents a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to live in­to the pur­pose that Carib, brand Carib, which is to un­leash Caribbean fun in­to the world. So this is a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case our prod­ucts and al­so our cul­ture in a mar­ket that is very much open. They’re very much at­tract­ed to the Caribbean lifestyle.”

Crick­et is the most pop­u­lar sport in In­dia, and de­spite the de­cline of the West In­dies crick­et team in the past few decades, West In­di­an crick­eters re­main pop­u­lar in In­dia due to their ex­ploits in the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL).

Dur­ing the meet­ing, the group’s fi­nan­cial re­sults for its first quar­ter end­ed March 31, 2024 were pre­sent­ed.

Group chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Nicholas Jack­man said the group was on an up­ward tra­jec­to­ry with rev­enue up by $55 mil­lion or three per cent to $1.649 bil­lion. Prof­it be­fore tax of $173 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ed a in­crease of $9 mil­lion or eight per cent com­pared to the first quar­ter of 2023.

Jack­man said these re­sults showed the group was on tar­get to sur­pass its per­for­mance last year.

“We want to flag that last year our rev­enue hit that $7 bil­lion wa­ter­shed mo­ment for the group and to be beat­ing it this year says we’re go­ing in the right di­rec­tion,” said Jack­man.