Jesse Ramdeo

An­gos­tu­ra has con­firmed that while an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing in­to a fire on Fri­day at its premis­es along the East­ern Main Road, busi­ness op­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue as nor­mal.

Short­ly af­ter 6 pm on Fri­day, a fire broke out at one of the botan­i­cal stor­age ar­eas for bit­ters pro­duc­tion.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, An­gos­tu­ra said both staff and a team of fire of­fi­cers worked to con­tain the blaze and main­tained that the main rum pro­duc­tion area was not dam­aged, "Our staff on du­ty at the time worked tire­less­ly and as­sid­u­ous­ly to cur­tail the spread of the fire. We wish to thank the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, Mr Arnold Bris­to, and his ded­i­cat­ed team for their ster­ling ef­fort to con­tain the fire."

The com­pa­ny said as such, its pro­duc­tion process re­mains un­af­fect­ed and as­sured an un­in­ter­rupt­ed ser­vice, " We ex­tend our deep­est grat­i­tude to the ded­i­cat­ed em­ploy­ees and the brave fire­fight­ers whose ef­fi­cien­cy and quick re­sponse en­sured the safe­ty of every­one in­volved. Their com­mit­ment to safe­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the face of ad­ver­si­ty is tru­ly com­mend­able. It is im­por­tant to note that busi­ness op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing sales, will con­tin­ue as nor­mal."

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the com­pound around mid­day on Sat­ur­day, smoke was still emerg­ing. An el­der­ly man who lived op­po­site the site said he was grate­ful the fire did not spread as he was ini­tial­ly con­cerned, he stat­ed, "I heard the fire brigade and them pass­ing and I find like I heard it stopped right by me, then my dog start­ed bark­ing so I say nah, some­thing wrong. I say let me come out­side when I come out it start to smell. Then I start to feel the heat, when I look up in the air I see the fire brigade pull up and in­stead of out­ing the fire they were out­ing the road be­cause all the wa­ter falling in the road, the hose need fix­ing, but so far they do a good job."

An­gos­tu­ra is a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny that pro­duces a col­lec­tion of rum brands. The Com­pa­ny al­so pro­duces the lead­ing bit­ters prod­ucts in the world.