Raphael John-Lall

An­gos­tu­ra de­cid­ed not to re­new its con­tract with lux­u­ry gi­ant Moet Hen­nessy to pro­duce 10 Cane Rum in T&T be­cause the pre­mi­um rum was not gen­er­at­ing suf­fi­cient busi­ness.In a state­ment yes­ter­day, An­gos­tu­ra said: "Af­ter al­most a decade work­ing with Moet Hen­nessey, An­gos­tu­ra de­cid­ed not to re­new the con­tracts since it did not bring the re­turns nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue the busi­ness."The com­pa­ny said they had start­ed to close down op­er­a­tions years ago.

"Part of the op­er­a­tions for 10 Cane rum was ac­tu­al­ly closed for a few years be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient de­mand. We worked with their team on re­lo­ca­tion and wish them all the suc­cess in the fu­ture," An­gos­tu­ra said.The Paris-based Moet Hen­nessy, one of the world's lead­ing wine and spir­it groups, moved its pro­duc­tion of its 10 Cane rum brand from Trinidad to the Foursquare Rum Dis­tillery in Bar­ba­dos.This is ex­pect­ed to pour in as much as US $50 mil­lion in for­eign ex­change in the Bar­ba­dos econ­o­my.

Sir David Seale, chair­man, Foursquare Rum Dis­tillery, in an­nounc­ing the agree­ment, de­scribed it as "Bar­ba­dos' gain over T&T",Bar­ba­dos In­dus­try Min­is­ter, Donville In­niss said Bar­ba­dos is not a low-cost lo­ca­tion for man­u­fac­tur­ing and as a re­sult they have to tap in­to the niche ar­eas and rum is a prod­uct that is syn­ony­mous with Bar­ba­dos and they will have to ex­ploit ful­ly the rum in­dus­try.

In wel­com­ing the deal ear­li­er this week, Foursquare's man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Richard Seale said the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of Bar­ba­dos part­ly rest­ed on the rum in­dus­try. He said the con­tract with Moet Hen­nessy could re­sult in many in­di­rect jobs, in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and be­tween ten per cent and 30 per cent more ex­ports."This brand has the short po­ten­tial to sell in the re­gion of two to three hun­dred thou­sand cas­es and to be­come a ma­jor glob­al brand when you want it to sell a mil­lion cas­es," he added.

The rum, launched in T&T in 2005, is made from first press sug­ar cane juice and it is known as a "rhum agri­cole," since it's dis­tilled from the cane juice in­stead of the more com­mon mo­lasses. It is called 10 Cane be­cause it sup­pos­ed­ly takes ten sug­ar cane stalks to make one bot­tle of the rum.