Sean Nero

Al­though faced with fierce com­pe­ti­tion and a slug­gish start to 2014, busi­ness is good at Carib Brew­ery Ltd, ac­cord­ing to chair­man An­drew Sab­ga,.He said a short­age of raw ma­te­ri­als forced some of the brew­ery's well-known prod­ucts off the shelves for the first two quar­ters of 2014 and this pro­vid­ed fer­tile ground for com­peti­tors to grow, Sab­ga said when he ad­dressed the com­pa­ny's re­cent sales swards at its Champ Fleurs head­quar­ter.

He said sup­ply short­ages, "al­lowed our com­pe­ti­tion to cap­i­talise on the sit­u­a­tion, there­by grow­ing their month­ly sales and grow­ing their mar­ket share three­fold. But all wasn't lost. In fact, our soft drink port­fo­lio of brands ex­ceed­ed bud­get and the 2013 fig­ure by a whop­ping 10.4 per cent. All of the soft drink brands did well, but this cat­e­go­ry was main­ly dri­ven by the malt brands, led by Smal­ta and Shandy."

Sab­ga added: "De­cem­ber 2014 was the high­est sales month ever in the his­to­ry of the com­pa­ny. It goes to show that if we put our minds to it and re­main fo­cused and we have a clear plan, there is noth­ing we can't achieve. We have in­creased com­pe­ti­tion from ex­ist­ing and new brands com­ing in­to the mar­ket, but against that back drop we will con­tin­ue to plod along, fight­ing to achieve our sales tar­gets sip by sip, bot­tle by bot­tle; can by can; six pack by six pack; case by case; out­let by out­let.

"We didn't in­vite those for­eign brands that came to be run­ning amok in our mar­ket. We will not sleep un­til they are no more. The bat­tle is on and we will stay the course un­til we win back every inch of ter­ri­to­ry lost over the past two years."Sab­ga said there are chal­lenges ahead for the bev­er­age sec­tor in­clud­ing the im­pact of falling oil and gas prices on the econ­o­my. He said su­per­mar­ket own­ers are al­ready talk­ing about slug­gish first quar­ter re­sults.

Even so, he urged Carib's sales team to stay the course and to con­tin­ue sat­is­fy­ing cus­tomer needs."There are few guar­an­tees in life, but as sure as the sun ris­es each and every day we will con­tin­ue to face ad­verse cir­cum­stances threat­en­ing our goals and as­pi­ra­tions, be it the eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment, gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, com­pe­ti­tion, crime. What­ev­er you want to call it, there is very lit­tle that can de­ter us from achiev­ing our goals once we put our minds and hearts to it.

"It is very, very lone­ly at the top. We have grown ac­cus­tomed to be­ing at the top of the food chain, en­joy­ing suc­cess in spite of our mishaps. When you are dom­i­nat­ing the mar­ket it is very easy to slip and not see the im­pact of that on your re­sults," Sab­ga said.

"Not every­one is hap­py see­ing us re­main at the top and many peo­ple and many or­gan­i­sa­tions will do any and every­thing in their pow­er to see us stum­ble and fall. As in­di­vid­u­als, we may find it dif­fi­cult to stave off threats to our liveli­hood, but if we band to­geth­er, we can suc­ceed in what­ev­er we set out minds to. If we band to­geth­er as one, with one com­mon fo­cus, one plan and all hands on deck, there is noth­ing�re­gard­less of the sit­u­a­tion and cir­cum­stances�that we can't achieve."