An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

As An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd cel­e­brat­ed its 200th an­niver­sary, it un­veiled its new spe­cial edi­tion bit­ters and pre­mi­um rum bot­tles.

An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Ter­rence Bharath said that giv­en the grow­ing im­pact of cli­mate change in the Caribbean, An­gos­tu­ra must be more vig­i­lant in its ef­forts to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment.

He made the com­ment at a cel­e­bra­to­ry event at Mille Fleurs, Mar­aval Road, Port of Spain, on Thurs­day night.

"I think we're fast recog­nis­ing that the dam­age that we've done to the en­vi­ron­ment has now come to haunt us. If you look re­cent­ly at Dubai and you've seen what de­struc­tion is hap­pen­ing there from the heavy rains, you'd re­al­ize that a change in tem­per­a­ture and the de­ple­tion of the ozone lay­er is caus­ing a lot of hav­oc in the com­mu­ni­ty,” Bharath de­tailed.

He said in the re­design process, the com­pa­ny, which has opt­ed large­ly for nat­ur­al in­gre­di­ents, opt­ed for fur­ther en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ap­proach­es.

“We use mo­lasses in the man­u­fac­ture of rum, as you know and mo­lasses comes from sug­ar cane. We make our caramel for colour­ing and flavour­ing the al­co­hol," the chair­man dis­closed.

Bharath told the in­vi­tees gath­ered that the com­pa­ny pre­vi­ous­ly held a British roy­al war­rant from the late queen since 1955, but it was in­val­i­dat­ed with her death on Sep­tem­ber 8, 2022.

These war­rants, he said, are ac­knowl­edge­ments that a com­pa­ny sup­plied goods or ser­vices to the roy­al fam­i­ly.

An­gos­tu­ra was giv­en a mora­to­ri­um pe­ri­od to reap­ply, he said.

“Our reap­pli­ca­tion is now, es­sen­tial­ly, a fresh ap­pli­ca­tion, and King Charles III has changed the rules sig­nif­i­cant­ly. So, he has put to­geth­er a team to de­ter­mine who gets war­rants and it is all fix­at­ed on ESG.

“It re­quires us to be as­sured that the prin­ci­pal raw ma­te­ri­als to be used in the man­u­fac­ture of bit­ters are sourced from sup­pli­ers that have em­ployed the prin­ci­ples of ESG in­to their pro­duc­tion.”

He al­so said the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny, lo­cat­ed on East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, has its waste-wa­ter treat­ment plant so when there are re­leas­es in­to the ecosys­tem, the waste­water does not dam­age the en­vi­ron­ment. The com­pa­ny is now work­ing on a project that would al­low it to use its bio­gas for elec­tric­i­ty.

The chair­man added that sus­tain­abil­i­ty ef­forts did not on­ly in­clude en­vi­ron­men­tal preser­va­tion but al­so en­cour­aged sus­tain­able prac­tices for its farm­ers.

Al­so speak­ing at the event was An­gos­tu­ra’s Lau­rent Schun who said the com­pa­ny was proud of its progress in sus­tain­abil­i­ty and per­for­mance.

Schun said 150 mil­lion bot­tles of bit­ters were sold in the US last year and there was sig­nif­i­cant growth in South Africa, Uruguay, Nether­lands, Lithua­nia, and Greece, among oth­er coun­tries.

“We are at a piv­otal mo­ment in our his­to­ry. Build­ing on this 200 years of lega­cy, we want to trans­form the or­gan­i­sa­tion, rein­vent the mod­el to meet the de­mands of the 21st-cen­tu­ry mar­ket­place, take ad­van­tage of op­por­tu­ni­ties that may not have been ful­ly ex­plored and ac­cel­er­ate in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment in the com­ing years,” Schun said.

He in­di­cat­ed that the suc­cess of its bit­ters was a roadmap for its pre­mi­um rums.