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Published at 1:15 pm, July 8, 2011
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Photo Credits: As Captain Morgan Leaves, Puerto Rico is Hoping to Keep the Rum Business Going With New Distillery

Near San Juan, Puerto Rico, a former pharmaceutical plant is being transformed into a rum distillery in hopes of helping the economy recover from the loss of Captain Morgan rum.

The new distillery is being developed by Club Caribe Distillers LLC, a local bottler of Coca-Cola, and agreements to produce rum in bulk for third parties has already been made. However, the company is also looking to break into the U.S. market with new products: a white rum called Club Caribe, a spiced rum called Black Roberts, and Ron Carlos, a dark rum.

“We see a great opportunity to increase the demand for local rum in the United States,” said Alberto Rivera, senior vice president and principal finance officer for Club Caribe.

When at full capacity, the plant should be able to produce 10 millions gallons of rum per year, though as part of the 20-year deal, only 2 million gallons of rum will be produced in the plant’s first year. It is scheduled to be opened in early 2012.

Club Caribe is expected to employ 25 people and invest $10 million in machinery and equipment in the former GlaxoSmithKline building. In the first year, it is believed the plant’s production will eventually generate $20 million in revenue for the island.

As Captain Morgan leaves the island, the U.S. commonwealth is expected to lose $140 million in. The rum producer is moving “next door”, to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The rum industry has created 4,500 direct and indirect jobs. It also provides the government with around $400 million annually in rum rebate revenue.

The new distillery is located in the mountain town of Cidra, Puerto Rico.

Diageo aims to take on Bacardi

• By Robyn Black
• 14/04/2011 09:14

Diageo has announced its intention to take on Bacardi to become the number one rum company in the world by 2015.

Captain Morgan: kick-starting Diageo push to become number one rum company 

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The owner of rum brands Captain Morgan, Bundaberg and Pampero currently has a 17% share of the UK rum market and sees further growth coming from golden and dark rum and golden rum-based spirits.

To kick-start the push, the company has earmarked £7m for its Morgan’s Spiced brand, renaming it Captain Morgan’s Spiced and investing in a TV campaign and on-trade push.

“Consumers may already be aware of the Captain Morgan brand from the dark rum currently available in the UK market,” said marketing manager Ali Wilkes.

“The addition of the Captain figurehead to the title and the label of Morgan’s Spiced will create synergy across the two brands and also give Morgan’s Spiced an identifiable personality.”

The campaign will be aimed at 18 to 24-year-old male drinkers and focus on the “Captain and cola” serve, which is already the number two bar call in the US, according to Diageo.

As well as the planned TV campaign, set for this autumn, the company is joining forces with the NUS, Luminar and other pub companies to host 3,000 party nights, due to be held between this June and June of next year.

Sampling, PoS kits and visits from the Captain and his “Morganettes” will create buzz and excitement around the brand, said Wilkes.

Havana, April 12 (IANS) Cuba expects to sell four million cases of its flagship rum Havana Club in 2011, despite a US decision not to renew its marketing license in the country, president of the state-owned Cuban Rum Corporation said here.

‘The Cuban industrial capability is at a very high level,’ president of the Cuban Rum Corporation Juan Gonzalez said, adding they expected rum exports would reach more than $100 million in 2011.

Arian Remedios, legal advisor of Havana Club International, said the company sold 3.8 million cases of rum in 2010, a growth of 14 percent over the previous year, reported Xinhua.

A US federal appeal court in Washington decided last week not to renew the marketing licence of the Cuban brand in the US, which was acquired by Cuba in 1976, due to the embargo against the island which has been in effect since 1962.

However, the Cuban government said the sentence favoured the US Bacardi Rum group.

The French group Pernod-Ricard and the Cuban Rum Corporation, which formed the joint venture Havana Club International, have been fighting with the Bacardi group since 1994 for the license of selling the Havana Club brand in the US market.

A front view of the Long Pond Estate in Clark’s Town, Trelawny. The factory has a history of being the largest employer in the community and used to produce the famed Trelawny Gold Rum.

Mark Titus, Business Reporter

Hussey family, controlled Everglades Farms Limited is investing more than US$6 million (J$515 million) to modernise the Long Pond sugar estate that was shuttered after a disastrous start to its first year as a sugar manufacturer in the 2009-10 season.

Long Pond then churned 1,400 tonnes of sugar, easily the worst in the history of the plant.

Two years ago, Everglades acquired Long Pond in a package that includes the Hampden Estates, both located in Trelawny, but was forced to sit out the 2010-11 crop year after it was agreed that substantial work was needed in order to realise the potential capacity of the new assets.

“When we acquired the assets, it was in very bad condition, and we got no opportunity to see how it ran,” Outman Hussey, Everglade’s design and special projects manager, told Sunday Business in an interview on Wednesday.

“When we did take over, the first thing we saw that did not make sense was the oil usage,” said Hussey, a director of the company and professor of architecture at Howard University.

“You could not supply Bunker C oil by a tanker fast enough …”.

Hussey said Everglades relied on the evaluation of the engineers from SCJ Holdings to diagnose the problem and come up with the solution solution, but came to regret that decision.

“Records will show that we did everything that was recommended to be done and more, but when we started the factory the following season it was very apparent that it was not going to happen,” he said.

The Husseys, known mainly in tourism and horse-racing circles, brought in international experts and evaluators in the industry, and is now accepting bids for the engineering work to be done which will see Long Pond retrofitted to ensure that the factory can churn sugar cane throughout the season once commissioned.

The new crop year kicks off at around December.

“It is hard when you are used to doing business in a more private setting to come in a business that is constantly in the public domain, but we think we now have the right people in the right place to now do things the right way,” a more reserved Andrew Hussey, also a director, said.

This will include returning the boilers to the design specifications that they were made for, and eliminating the use of oil at the factory, relying totally on bagasse.

Everglades’ business plan goes beyond sugar production and calls for a diversified product: rum and tourism.

“In diversification, you have to look at what the region is, what the region has to offer, and what the resources are in terms of materials, lands, the people, and the skill level, and then you can determine the matrix,” Andrew said.

Tourism is a key part of the company’s plan, which details a tourism product that includes a rum museum for Hampden, a sugar cane museum for Clark’s Town, and tours of the great houses and sugar cane mills now being refurbished. Horses are also being bred on the properties.

The family said their entry into sugar was easy, as the senior Hussey, Laurie, had been a cane farmer years ago, supplying the Bernard Lodge factory in St Catherine.

“Our dad does not want to see land waste, and what that has done for us as the younger ones is help us to see empty land as not good,” said Andrew.

Everglades employs almost 40 persons on the estates’ farms where crops such as cabbage, lettuce, tomato, pak choi, sweet pepper, hot pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, Irish potato, string beans, carrot, sweet corn, pumpkin, sweet potato, pineapple, cantaloupe, water melon, thyme, escallion, and onion are planted for the hospitality industry in Western Jamaica.

“In this model, you come to Everglades and there will be a number of different job opportunities, whether it is in rum, horses, sugar, or tours,” said Outman.

“Sugar is very important in the mix of our diversified products because we will need sugar more now than before, especially good, organic sugar. And that is why the cane farmers must know that they are a very important part of our plans going forward. We will need their cane to complement ours to produce the quality sugar we intend for a proper return on our investment,” he said.

The entire plan will be rolled out over a five to 10-year period. For now, the Husseys say the next milestone is packaging and marketing their own branded sugar.

The family says its sales of bulk rum to Europe are up 30 per cent since 2009, and they will be developing a warehouse for rum storage. They were unwilling to speak to the details of the project, however.

Hampden has launched a new spirit, Rum Fire, in partnership with Red Stripe Jamaica as its distributor. The Husseys hope to capture 20 per cent of the Jamaican rum market over time. The market is dominated by Wray and Nephew.

Both Hampden and Long Pond figured prominently during the heyday of sugar production in western Jamaica, and at one time, were chief sources of income for residents of Clark’s Town and other Trelawny communities.

However, in the last two decades, sugar hit a steady decline and the estates and their equipment aged.

At the turn of this decade – the 2000-01 crop – the two factories produced a combined 20,000 tonnes of the sweetener, 5,000 tonnes of which came from the smaller estate, Hampden.

The tonnage, quoted by itself, tells little, but consider that just three years before, in 1997, Hampden alone, which had the capacity for 15,000 tonnes, was churning out 12,000 tonnes of sugar.

Despite the availability of some 1,284 hectares of land for planting cane, only 676 hectares were put into cultivation for the 2000-01 crop.

The estate, which was teetering on the brink of financial ruin and had been rescued by the Government in the 1990s under the bailout programme for the financial sector, would later be placed in receivership.

Before that time, the estate was controlled by the Farquharson family.

The records show that during the 1997-2002 period, Hampden sustained losses of more than J$45 million.

Long Pond and other sugar assets were last in private ownership under a deal in 1993 that gave 51 per cent control to a Wray and Nephew-led consortium, that included Cliff Cameron’sManufacturers Investment Limited and Booker Tate Limited of the United Kingdom.

Each private partner held 17 per cent, whereas the Jamaican Government retained a minority 49 per cent.

The state would eventually re-acquire the SCJ after the consortium failed to turn the company into a money-maker.

Under the deal with Everglades, the new owners must maintain 60 per cent of the leased lands for sugar-cane production or related products for 15 years.

The deal covers the two factories and surrounding 40 hectares of land, plus an additional 7,100 hectares, which are leased for US$40 per hectare per annum for the first 10 years of the agreement.

For 2010-11, the company has planted 5,000 hectares of new cane, and will plant an additional 1,408 hectares of cane over the four years to follow, which is projected to yield 280,000 tonnes of cane in the next five years.

“This means businesses in the communities will see an increase in trade, taxis will have more passengers to carry, and there will be additional opportunities for employment,” said Outman.

“So in essence, we are mixing green infrastructure with traditional, infrastructure, and in that way, we are conducting a business while preserving the heritage.”

mark.titus@gleanerjm.com

Glazer’s to distribute Amalgamated’s rum across Missouri

St. Louis Business Journal – by Kelsey Volkmann

Date: Thursday, March 31, 2011, 12:32pm CDT

Jesse Jones 

Amalgamated Brewing and Distilling Co. said Thursday it reached a deal with Glazer’s to distribute Amalgamated’s 85 Lashes Rum beyond St. Louis to throughout Missouri.

Amalgamated, a craft brewer and micro-distillery in St. Louis led by President Jesse Jones, hand distills its rum in small batches.

The expanded distribution deal is expected to boost Amalgamated’s revenue this year by $500,000 to approximately $3 million, Vice President Brad Wheeling said.

“Glazer’s is in every bar, restaurant and liquor store,” he said.

Amalgamated’s previous distributor, Classique, is a smaller, specialty distributor, he said.

Wirtz Beverage Group distributes 85 Lashes in Illinois.

Amalgamated also owns and operates Jake’s Steaks on Laclede’s Landing and The Stable in Benton Park.

Amalgamated Brewing and Distilling Co. said Thursday it reached a deal with Glazer’s to distribute Amalgamated’s 85 Lashes Rum beyond St. Louis to throughout Missouri.

Amalgamated, a craft brewer and micro-distillery in St. Louis led by President Jesse Jones, hand distills its rum in small batches.

The expanded distribution deal is expected to boost Amalgamated’s revenue this year by $500,000 to approximately $3 million, Vice President Brad Wheeling said.

“Glazer’s is in every bar, restaurant and liquor store,” he said.

Amalgamated’s previous distributor, Classique, is a smaller, specialty distributor, he said.

Wirtz Beverage Group distributes 85 Lashes in Illinois.

Amalgamated also owns and operates Jake’s Steaks on Laclede’s Landing and The Stable in Benton Park.

Exodus from Lascelles’ board

McConnell, Bell and Abrahams stepping down

BY AL EDWARDS Caribbean Business Report Editor aledwards@jamaicaobserver.com

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

THREE Jamaican Board members of Trinidadian-acquired conglomerate Lascelles De Mercado, namely William McConnell, Anthony Bell and Jason Abrahams are to step down, the Jamaica Observer understands.

Managing Director of Lascelles, McConnell, is credited with turning the rum division into a world-class outfit and one of the best rum producers in the region.

William McConnell 1/1

He joined Lascelles subsidiary J Wray & Nephew as Financial Accountant in 1973 and has served as Managing Director of the Wray & Nephew Group of Companies since 1977.

Bell served as Group Finance Director having been with the group for well over two decades. He played a vital role in turning the flagship division – Rum, Wines and Liquors – into a powerhouse and oversaw Canada overtaking Mexico as Appleton’s biggest overseas market.

The prospect of both McConnell and Bell forming a consortium and acquiring the rum division and spinning it off from the Group has been mooted for sometime, especially given the heavily indebted status of parent company CL Financial.

Abrahams meanwhile, is a Jamaican investment banker based in Florida who was instrumental in structuring and securing the deal that saw CL Financial subsidiary Angostura acquire Lascelles in 2008.

In that year Lawrence Duprey’s CL Financial raised external debt financing in the amount of US$450 million to finance the Lascelles acquisition which amounted to US$676 million.

For its money, CL Financial got 86.87 per cent of Lascelles’ common stock.

With Duprey’s group of companies falling asunder in 2009, CL Financial Group’s financial director Michael Carballo intimated at Lascelles AGM that year, that CL Financial may have to turn to Lascelles to finance the US$340 million loan balance it had from the purchase of the Jamaican conglomerate.

One of the major problems CL Financial had was the intertwining of assets and its insatiable thirst for cash which served to bedevil the fortunes of Lascelles’ group of companies. The financial uncertainty and inability to  provide a coherent direction for the Jamaican group may well be a contributory factor in seeing McConnell, Bell and Abrahams heading for the door.

In 2010, Lascelles’ third-quarter sales for the period ending June 30 slumped by $700 million to come in at $6 billion. Net profit dramatically fell to $363 million from $1.39 billion for the same period in 2009.

For the first quarter ended December 31, 2010, Lascelles reported unaudited consolidated earnings results which saw  an operating profit of $931.1 million and a net profit of $821.3 million on operating revenues of $7.1 billion.

Lascelles is expected to report its second quarter 2011 results on May 11.

Bacardi Continues Legal Actions to Protect Its Havana Club Rum Trademark Rights in Spain
Businesswire 14 March 2011

HAMILTON, Bermuda — Bacardi Limited, the largest privately held spirits company in the world, continues to pursue all available legal options to protect its legitimate ownership and trademark rights to the Havana Club brand in Spain.
In a brief filed with the High Court earlier this month, Bacardi Limited asked the Spanish Supreme Court for clarification of some aspects of its ruling where the High Court recognized the respect of Spanish law for fundamental rights violated by an expropriation without compensation. While the Court clarified its interpretation of some of the technical aspects in the initial ruling, Bacardi remains focused on the remaining legal options available.
On February 3, the High Court of Spain released its decision that the transfer of the trademark registration of Havana Club rum in Spain by Cuba and its partners was not consistent with Spanish public law. The Spanish Court ruled that Havana Club Holdings “does not deserve to be considered a good faith third party purchaser of the Spanish trademark of Havana Club,” and noted that the company Jose Arechabala, S.A. (and Bacardi as its legal successor) was illegally deprived in Spain of the Spanish trademark registration for Havana Club. The Court however did not restore the Spanish trademark registration to Bacardi solely on the grounds of a technicality involving the statute of limitations applied to the claim.

It is critical to note that Spain’s High Court declared that Spanish law does not recognize in Spain the validity of the transfers to Cuba and its partners of the Spanish Havana Club trademark registration on the basis of the confiscation of Havana Club ordered by the Cuban State in 1960.
Bacardi will continue to defend its fundamental rights against expropriation having purchased the trademark rights in Spain from the original legal owners, creators and proprietors of the brand.
Bacardi has won all U.S. court cases relating to the rights to use the HAVANA CLUB brand, up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
About Bacardi Limited
Bacardi Limited is the largest privately held spirits company in the world and produces and markets a variety of internationally-recognized spirits and wines. The Bacardi Limited brand portfolio consists of more than 200 brands and labels, including some of the world’s favorite and best-known products: BACARDI® rum, the world’s favorite and best-selling premium rum as well as the world’s most awarded rum; GREY GOOSE® vodka, the world-leader in super premium vodka; DEWAR’S® Blended Scotch whisky, the number-one selling blended Scotch whisky in the United States; BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® gin, the top-valued and fastest-growing premium gin in the world; MARTINI® vermouth and sparkling wines, the world-leader in vermouth; CAZADORES® 100% blue agave tequila, the number-one premium tequila in Mexico and a top-selling premium tequila in the United States; and other leading and emerging brands.
Bacardi was founded in Santiago de Cuba, February 4, 1862, and currently employs more than 6,000 people, manufactures its brands at 27 facilities in 16 countries on four continents, and sells in more than 100 markets globally. Bacardi Limited refers to the Bacardi group of companies, including Bacardi International Limited.

www.bacardilimited.com

Love the headline! Rum Pundit

Dollar Strengthens on Divine Intervention

Published on Mon, 14/03/2011, 11:43:03

By Jordan Gelbart

Australian owned rum Holey Dollar has continued its winning streak at international spirits competitions, being awarded ‘Master’ and ‘Gold’ status at The Spirit Masters Series.

The series is held by The Spirits Business Magazine with the Rum Masters section of the competition independently judged by a panel of industry experts.

Holey Dollar Rum Cask Strength (75.9 percent ABV with a RRP of $84.99) and Holey Dollar Rum Overproof (57.2 percent ABV with a RRP of $64.99) were both awarded ‘Master’ status, the highest accolade that can be awarded by the panel.

Holey Dollar Rum Premium (40 percent ABV with a RRP of $39.99) was awarded ‘Gold’.

Holey Dollar has received some of the highest honours in the spirits category, taking out ‘Best in Class’ for the past two years at the International Wine & Spirits Competition.

“It’s wonderful that the International market is recognising the quality of the rums that we are creating but what’s even better is seeing how Australian consumers are embracing the ‘buy local, think global’ concept,” said master distiller at Holey Dollar Stuart Gilbert.

“The growing group of Holey Dollar Rum drinkers are people that are passionate about discovering something a little bit different and enjoy consuming the highest quality, world-class products, but at the same time, appreciate something that is actually close to home and 100 percent Australian family owned company.

Holey Dollar Rum is named after the coins with holes punched out that, significantly, superseded rum as the main form of currency in NSW after the Rum Rebellion.

The Spirit of a Privateer: Privateer International Opens Distillery

Posted on 03/10/11 at 11:00pm by webmaster

The Spirit of a Privateer: Privateer International Opens Distillery

Andrew Cabot opens rum distillery in Ipswich, MA

Ipswich, MA (Vocus/PRWEB) March 10, 2011

It was an economic instigator for the American Revolution. George Washington insisted on having it at his 1789 inauguration. Early in the history of the country, it was a ubiquitous campaigning tool. And prior to the Revolutionary War, the average American consumed three gallons of it per year.

Rum is the common thread running through these events in the early history of the American Republic. And the name Andrew Cabot (1750-1791) was associated with the manufacture of one of the earliest rums ever made on American shores. Cabot, along with his business partners, owned a rum distillery in Beverly Massachusetts, along the Atlantic Coast, just north of Boston. They smuggled their molasses into the country in defiance of British tariffs and laws. Once America declared independence from Britain, the economics of distilling rum changed, and Cabot divested his distillery to focus on increasing his interests in privateering.

Today, the namesake Andrew Cabot, six generations removed from the original, is carefully handcrafting fine American rum in Ipswich, MA.

Distilled from premium ingredients, in small batches, and with an obsessive attention to quality, Privateer Rum is a touchstone to an era when rum was America’s most prized spirit.

“There was an irresistibility and inevitability to this mission,” said Andrew. “And it quickly became clear to us that Privateer was positioned to fill an important gap in the ultra premium rum market.”

Bill Owens, President of the American Distilling Institute, concurs: “During the American Revolution, a war privateer and successful businessman from Massachusetts named Andrew Cabot was also busy distilling rum. Nearly three hundred years later, his descendant by the same name is using the original family approach to create his own craft-made rum. It is amazing to me that the great American spirit of ingenuity, freedom and independence can carry across so many generations, and nothing carries this tradition better than the art of distilling.”

Privateer’s award-winning master distiller Eric Watson said, “Privateer Rum will be like no other rum available in America today. Our proprietary approach combines the best of old and new world practices, resulting in levels of character and complexity that often are not found in ultra premium rums today.”

Privateer International, the name of the distillery, refers to the twenty-five privateer vessels that the original Cabot owned in whole or part during the American Revolution; these were fast and maneuverable vessels that hunted British merchant ships across the North Atlantic and from Canada to the Caribbean. Rum was the second entitlement of the sailors in this fleet, the first being their shares in the large prizes they captured from British merchants.

The rum that bears the Privateer label embodies the rebellious American spirit, and is currently available by the barrel at the Privateer Distillery, 28 Mitchell Road, Ipswich, MA.

For more information, visit http://www.privateerrum.com

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2011/3/prweb8197858.htm