KALAIN HO­SEIN | Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

The Cam­pari Group has in­vest­ed US$79.1 mil­lion in­to Ja­maica's lead­ing rum man­u­fac­tur­er, J. Wray & Nephew Lim­it­ed (JWN), im­prov­ing its Dun­der Treat­ment Plant and a new col­umn still at its New Yarmouth Dis­tillery in Claren­don, Ja­maica.

Ac­cord­ing to JWN, this project is set to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the rum sec­tor in the Caribbean and cre­ate a new stan­dard for Dun­der man­age­ment.

Cam­pari Group Vice Pres­i­dent of Man­u­fac­tur­ing (Amer­i­c­as), Crea Lavin-Kitch­er, shared the de­tails in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

"In the process of mak­ing rum in Ja­maica—our renowned sig­na­ture Ap­ple­ton Es­tate Rum as well as Wray & Nephew White Over­proof Rum, and there is the liq­uid that doesn't ac­tu­al­ly make it in­to the al­co­hol and the rum that is our fin­ished prod­uct. So that liq­uid is ef­fec­tive­ly Dun­der, con­tain­ing things like the mo­lasses that hasn't turned in­to al­co­hol, ba­si­cal­ly, any wa­ter that we use in the process,” she ex­plained.

In the past, ac­cord­ing to Lavin-Kitch­er, sug­ar­cane was brought in­to rum dis­til­leries, and Dun­der was re­turned to the soil to be used as a fer­til­iz­er in the sug­ar­cane fields. How­ev­er, as time passed, this prac­tice was hurt­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, and the Cam­pari Group rec­og­nized the need to re­duce their en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

"Dun­der has a rel­a­tive­ly high amount of salts,” she not­ed.  “It has a high COD or BOD load­ing." COD and BOD stand for ‘bi­o­log­i­cal’ and ‘chem­i­cal oxy­gen de­mand’, re­spec­tive­ly.

Upgrades to the J. Wray & Nephew Limited New Yarmouth Distillery in Clarendon, Jamaica (Photo: JWN)

JWN

Lavin-Kitch­er stat­ed the new up­grades will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment.

"If there is a con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, for ex­am­ple, in a wa­ter­way, you don't want to re­duce the oxy­gen de­mand; you don't want to re­move the oxy­gen from the wa­ter­ways. This is a mea­sure for us in terms of en­sur­ing that we're be­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sound in terms of the ir­ri­ga­tion wa­ter that we'll be putting back on­to the fields,” she said.

She added: “What you don't want to do is have any­thing that has a pos­si­ble risk of re­mov­ing oxy­gen so that plants and fish and every­thing else can make sure that they have a healthy en­vi­ron­ment."

In a chang­ing cli­mate in the Caribbean re­gion, con­di­tions are get­ting dri­er. When rains do fall, they come in ex­treme vol­umes, lead­ing to quick runoff that takes the top­soil and, in turn, Dun­der in­to the wa­ter­cours­es.

"The last thing that we want is J. Wray & Nephew and Cam­pari im­pact­ing the wa­ter­ways in Ja­maica. We've been do­ing a lot of work his­tor­i­cal­ly around mak­ing sure we con­tain those sug­ar­cane fields and make sure that we don't have the risk of that en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact," Lavin-Kitch­er said.

The project gar­nered praise from Sen­a­tor the Hon. Matthew Samu­da, Ja­maica's Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the En­vi­ron­ment.

"This new plant is a game chang­er in Ja­maica and the wider Caribbean re­gion, with great po­ten­tial for re­gen­er­a­tion and sus­tained pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact,” Min­is­ter Samu­da ob­served. “J. Wray & Nephew Lim­it­ed's com­mit­ment to trans­form­ing Dun­der in­to valu­able ma­te­ri­als and less­en­ing their op­er­a­tional out­put on the en­vi­ron­ment aligns per­fect­ly with our en­vi­ron­men­tal goals."

750-killowatt solar park at the J. Wray & Nephew Limited New Yarmouth Distillery in Clarendon, Jamaica (Photo: JWN)

JWN

The Cam­pari Group al­so has in­vest­ed in green en­er­gy to im­prove their Dun­der pro­duc­tion.

Lavin-Kitch­er told Guardian Me­dia that they have in­stalled a 750-kilo­watt so­lar park to gen­er­ate green en­er­gy to pro­duce steam. Steam al­lows the dis­til­la­tion of Dun­der and pu­rifi­ca­tion us­ing a clean­er en­er­gy source than diesel used in the past.

"It's nev­er a full stop with us at J. Wray & Nephew,” she said. “We're con­stant­ly look­ing.”

“Hope­ful­ly, we'll con­tin­ue to talk to you about the con­tin­ued in­vest­ment and con­tin­u­ous ways that we're mak­ing our rum in the right way, the safe way. The high­est pol­i­cy, re­spect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment that we're in,” Lavin-Kitch­er as­sert­ed.

The plant is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in the next 12 months.

Jean-Philippe Bey­er, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of JWN, says un­til the ad­vanced treat­ment plant be­comes op­er­a­tional, the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to uti­lize des­ig­nat­ed cane fields for fer­ti­ga­tion—the cre­ation of large ponds for safe waste stor­age—and work with Ja­maica's Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­ment and Plan­ning Agency to en­sure ad­her­ence to safe process­es and pro­ce­dures.