Rumpundit

Worthy Park Estate eyes 25% share of white rum market

Planning launch of aged rum following 30 per cent growth in May

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Worthy Park Estate’s US$5-million (J$445 million) investment in its Rum-Bar white overproof brand is on track to take 25 per cent of the Jamaican market, otherwise dominated by Wray & Nephew, according to director Gordon Clarke. The company plans to begin exporting to the US and will launch an aged rum brand by year-end.

“I would hope to get a significant share of the overproof rum market in five years, I would say 25 per cent,” Clarke told the Business Observer at his head office in St Catherine. Clarke said Jamaica consumes about 650,000 cases of standard nine-litre white overproof rum and about 250,000 cases of red rum annually, with the lion’s share being manufactured by competitor Wray & Nephew.

Worthy Park Estate director and distillery manager Gordon Clarke standing in front of vats at the estate’s Rum-Bar overproof rum distillery in St Catherine. (Photos: Michael Gordon)

Clarke, who is also distillery manager at Worthy Park, said year-on-year sales have tripled. “We have started an aggressive marketing campaign and our sales are growing rapidly, so much so that our sales over last year grew 300 per cent and 30 per cent in May over April.”

Rum-Bar won a gold medal in February 2009 from The Spirits Business magazine’s “Rum Masters” tasting competition in the overproof category. The London-based magazine ran the competition using 55 rum brands from around the world. “The genuineness and likeability of our product was confirmed by an international panel of tasters,” said Clarke, adding “it is a pat on the back.”

Clarke claimed Worthy Park’s rum is smoother and mixes better than its rivals. The brand’s 65 per cent alcohol content is two percentage points more potent than its main rivals, Wray & Nephew’s White Overproof Rum and Charley’s JB Overproof Rum.

The company is mum on revenues but Clarke said production is currently below capacity: “We can distil enough rum for over 400,000 cases annually,” he said, declining to specify current production levels. The company is currently using less than 20 per cent of the molasses it produces on the estate, “so we can continue to use our own molasses for quite some time.”

Worthy Park produces on average 24,000 tonnes of sugar and 7,000 tonnes of molasses from over 3,600 hectares (7,000 acres) of cane lands. The estate claims to be the island’s most efficient, producing sugar cane at 83 tonnes per hectare, resulting in a 10-tonnes-per-hectare sugar yield.
The estate plans to export the Rum-Bar brand to the US within the coming two-to-three months, but has already been selling unbranded bulk rum overseas since the brand’s launch in 2007. “We are very shortly going to establish a distributor in the US. I would think between the next two to three months we will be exporting Rum-Bar.”

Worth Park Estate also expects to launch its aged rum by October, but has yet to disclose the name it will use for the brand. “We have rum that has been ageing for four years, and in three-to-four months we will be introducing a gold rum in the local market.”

The company has over 4,700 barrels of rum aged from one to four years which it will use for its new brand. The distillery, constructed in 2005, can produce 7,000 litres of rum per day. It sits on four acres of cleared cane lands.

Founded in 1670, Worthy Park Estate has been producing rum intermittently since the 1740s. It ceased rum production in the 1950s under an agreement with the Spirits Pool Association of Jamaica to curtail over production, only to launch its rum business again in 2007 in order to diversify its revenue stream hurt by falling European Union (EU) sugar prices.

“Our core business is sugar, but our revenue from sugar is very uncertain due to the reduced price from our current EU market, so there is an uncertain future in the price of sugar so the distillery was an opportunity for diversification and adding value to one of our by-products, which is molasses,” he said.