An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

As An­gos­tu­ra’s Hold­ing Ltd con­tin­ues to ex­pand its mar­ket reach, the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny is set to pen­e­trate Mozam­bique in East Africa this month.  

This was re­vealed by Rahim Mo­hammed, An­gos­tu­ra’s ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of busi­ness ef­fi­cien­cy and shared ser­vices, on Mon­day at the com­pa­ny’s fo­rum on its fi­nan­cial re­sults for the 9-month pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

Mo­hammed said it would be sup­ply­ing its fa­mous bit­ters to the African coun­try and ex­pects to grow fur­ther.

“ We keep win­ning the award for ex­porter of the year and in­no­va­tor of the year an­nu­al­ly. It’s a con­stant re­cur­ring dec­i­mal. That goes to the work of the staff. We do not know what a week­end off is like as we are con­stant­ly look­ing to in­no­vate the busi­ness.”

In Ju­ly, the lo­cal rum pro­duc­er com­pa­ny reen­tered the Chi­nese mar­ket, and Mo­hammed said with­in one month the com­pa­ny had an or­der twice the size of the first or­der.

 An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Ter­rence Bharath, back then dur­ing a news con­fer­ence said the com­pa­ny ex­it­ed the Chi­nese mar­ket in 2022 as it felt the pre­vi­ous dis­trib­u­tor was not gain­ing trac­tion.

He in­di­cat­ed that one of the things that con­cerned An­gos­tu­ra was hav­ing a dis­trib­u­tor so far away in Chi­na along with the lan­guage bar­ri­er.  

Al­so to dis­trib­ute T&T prod­ucts in Chi­na, it would be nec­es­sary to have an of­fice lo­cat­ed in that coun­try, Bharath said.

On the for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment front, Mo­hammed high­light­ed it is a plus for An­gos­tu­ra be­ing a rum man­u­fac­tur­er that is al­so able to bot­tle prod­ucts for oth­er com­pa­nies.

“Every few months we en­ter a qual­i­ty au­dit, whether it be an au­dit of the lab, the fac­to­ry, the man­age­ment sys­tem, the poli­cies, the pro­duc­ers. These things at­tract peo­ple to An­gos­tu­ra,” he stat­ed.

The ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er al­so said that over the week­end he re­ceived four for­eign calls, from ho­tels, and huge chains of bars, that want­ed to cre­ate a line of rum for its es­tab­lish­ment.

“When we do things like this, it at­tracts peo­ple more on want­i­ng to col­lab­o­rate with An­gos­tu­ra and the in­ter­na­tion­al brands are grow­ing.”  

Mo­hammed told the au­di­ence that with 176 mar­kets in the in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness lead­ing the way, along with more part­ner­ships and a lot more co-pack­ag­ing arrange­ments, this will trans­late in­to more in­vest­ment for the An­gos­tu­ra plant.

“The com­pa­ny has been gear­ing up to ramp up pro­duc­tion at the plant, so we have made a lot of in­vest­ment in new as­sets, faster, faster equip­ment, more ef­fi­cient equip­ment. So, we were ready for what­ev­er is to come.

On the re­gion­al mar­ket, Mo­hammed said the An­gos­tu­ra Chill Pear brand has been do­ing well, es­pe­cial­ly in Trinidad.

“I think part of our suc­cess is we don’t just come and make up some­thing and say, this is what we’re go­ing to do. There’s a lot of re­search that goes in­to every prod­uct that goes to mar­ket,” he added.

Per­for­mance

Asked about what per­cent­age of rev­enues is from ex­port as op­posed to do­mes­tic sales, An­gos­tu­ra’s chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer (CFO) Amar Seechan said up to the third quar­ter of this year it was 41 per cent ex­port and 59 per cent lo­cal.

“That used to be 65 per cent lo­cal and 35 per cent ex­ports. We have changed the dy­nam­ics in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.”  

Fur­ther, Seechan high­light­ed that the com­pa­ny’s net US earn­ings were US$57 mil­lion over the last five years.

“It has con­tributed over US$51 mil­lion to the lo­cal bank­ing sys­tem for the same pe­ri­od. The group’s US-dol­lar in­vest­ments av­er­age around US$74 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, clos­ing at US$77 mil­lion at the end of quar­ter three in 2024 – high­est in the last five years,” he de­tailed.

In  An­gos­tu­ra’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, it de­clared an af­ter-tax prof­it of $94.35 mil­lion, which was 9.6 per cent less than the $104.42 mil­lion the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny de­clared for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

That drop in prof­it was par­tial­ly due to a $22.2 mil­lion de­crease in rev­enue to $697.94 mil­lion for the nine months.

It not­ed that the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, re­gion­al mar­kets, du­ty-free seg­ment, and bulk and co-pack­ing seg­ments col­lec­tive­ly in­creased by $12.8 mil­lion or four per cent over the pri­or pe­ri­od. In­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al mar­kets per­formed well with brand­ed rev­enue grow­ing by $7.4 mil­lion or three per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in the pri­or year.

Seechan said that the fourth quar­ter of the year, which in­cludes the Christ­mas sea­son, is his­tor­i­cal­ly a pe­ri­od of “height­ened ac­tiv­i­ty”, and the group is fo­cused on max­imis­ing rev­enue gen­er­a­tion dur­ing this time.

In giv­ing a break­down of the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance, he said the com­pa­ny has con­sis­tent­ly paid in­creased div­i­dends to its share­hold­ers over the years, and in 2023 a div­i­dend of 38 cents per share was paid to share­hold­ers.

The ques­tion of ac­qui­si­tions was brought up, and An­gos­tu­ra’s chair­man, Ter­rence Bharath Sc, said that it is be­ing looked at. He in­di­cat­ed that it would take some time, but he as­sured that it is on the cards.

Asked if the com­pa­ny was be­ing run by a man­age­ment team and if there was a need for a chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Bharath said, “The CEO Lau­rent Schun’s term comes to an end on Jan­u­ary 14. We have put things in place to re­cruit a re­place­ment.

“In the mean­time, se­nior ex­ec­u­tives Ian Forbes, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, Rahim Mo­hammed, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er, busi­ness ef­fi­cien­cy and shared ser­vices, and Kathry­na Bap­tiste As­see, group gen­er­al coun­sel/cor­po­rate sec­re­tary will run the op­er­a­tions of An­gos­tu­ra.”

Asked whether the CEO was go­ing to be a lo­cal or in­ter­na­tion­al, Bharath said, “The CEO ex­pect­ed to be the best he or she ould be and con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the work An­gos­tu­ra has been do­ing over the years.”

Schun was ap­point­ed CEO in Jan­u­ary 2023.

He spent 28 years em­ployed with Pern­od Ri­card, the multi­na­tion­al French com­pa­ny that is among the top ten largest spir­its com­pa­nies in the world by rev­enue.

Schun’s last as­sign­ment at Pern­od Ri­card was as the CEO of its Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­can op­er­a­tions, based in Mi­a­mi, where he was re­spon­si­ble for 30 ter­ri­to­ries and 40-plus dis­trib­u­tors.