An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

An­gos­tu­ra’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Lau­rent Schun is look­ing for­ward to fur­ther suc­cess in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets af­ter the rum and bit­ters and bev­er­age com­pa­ny record­ed $1 bil­lion in rev­enue for the sec­ond time last year.

Schun made the com­ment at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of An­gos­tu­ra’s In­ter­na­tion­al Dis­trib­u­tors Fo­rum at Hy­att Re­gency.

He said last year’s prof­it be­fore tax was up 8 per cent as An­gos­tu­ra and in­ter­na­tion­al sales in 2023 con­tributed 76 per cent of its growth.

“Ful­ly three-quar­ters of our growth is com­ing from out­side T&T. That means that many of the peo­ple who will play a large part in our fu­ture re­sults are sit­ting here to­day. But we all know that if no one knows about a prod­uct, it will sit on the shelf. A glob­al­ly recog­nised brand is all for naught if the prod­ucts it car­ries are not recog­nised them­selves. Our suc­cess doesn’t hap­pen with­out con­tin­u­ous, ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing,” the An­gos­tu­ra CEO stressed.

On the ex­port side, Schun said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to see dou­ble-dig­it sales in­creas­es.  

He not­ed that the sales for its 1919 rum rose by al­most 25 per cent in France last year and over­all sales for three and five-year-old rums in Eu­rope were up by 16 per cent. In Latin Amer­i­ca, bit­ters sales grew by 11 per cent.

Schun in­di­cat­ed that the ex­port re­sults last year un­der­lined the im­por­tance of An­gos­tu­ra’s re­la­tion­ship with its dis­trib­u­tors, as the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny ex­port­ed 16 brands in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and in­ter­na­tion­al rev­enue grew by five per cent.  

“Our pre­mi­um rums sold well in Lithua­nia, Greece, and the USA. Our Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket more than tripled in size,” he out­lined.

Speak­ing to the me­dia fur­ther about An­gos­tu­ra’s growth, the CEO said since 2019, there has been steady  growth in all its mar­kets in­clud­ing the USA, France, Aus­tralia, and the UK.

“We have been con­sol­i­dat­ing our mar­ket share in the bit­ters mar­ket world­wide. In the US we are close to 85 per cent of the mar­ket of the bit­ters de­spite very strong com­pe­ti­tion and through­out the world we are be­tween 70 and 90 per cent mar­ket share with our bit­ters,” he high­light­ed.

Schun said that sev­er­al of the com­pa­ny’s pre­mi­um rums are al­so mak­ing waves in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, as he point­ed out the re­cent­ly re­leased Sym­pho­ny 2023 has al­ready sur­passed the an­nu­al sales achieved by its pre­de­ces­sor.

Asked what are the top-sell­ing An­gos­tu­ra prod­ucts lo­cal­ly, he iden­ti­fied White Oak and then For­res Park Pun­cheon.

Schun hint­ed that this evening at An­gos­tu­ra’s 200th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, there will be the un­veil­ing of new prod­ucts.

Ques­tioned on whether the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny will be pen­e­trat­ing new mar­kets, he said the lat­est ones are Nepal and the com­pa­ny just signed agree­ments with dis­trib­u­tors in Chi­na and new op­por­tu­ni­ties with In­dia.

“As I was say­ing more than 80 per cent of the mar­ket is in the top 10 mar­kets, which are main­ly West­ern mar­kets. So North Amer­i­ca and West­ern Eu­rope, but we still have a strong op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op in Asia and Africa,” the CEO de­tailed.

Al­so speak­ing was Diego Palmieri, pres­i­dent and chief op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer - Mizkan Amer­i­ca who is the ex­clu­sive dis­trib­u­tor for AN­GOS­TU­RA Bit­ters in North Amer­i­ca said the brand has grown since then and has be­come an icon­ic Bit­ters brand in its mar­ket.

“An­gos­tu­ra main­tains the high­est con­sumer aware­ness and is the most-con­sid­ered brand of bit­ters. In­deed, An­gos­tu­ra has over 85 per cent mar­ket share in the USA re­tail mar­ket.

“An­gos­tu­ra stands as a cor­ner­stone brand with­in our port­fo­lio, dri­ving sub­stan­tial growth for Mizkan. An­gos­tu­ra not on­ly fa­cil­i­tates our ex­pan­sion in­to new chan­nels but al­so cap­i­tal­izes on our strength in re­tail mar­kets,” Palmieri added.

The com­pa­ny said this is the first time the An­gos­tu­ra’s In­ter­na­tion­al Dis­trib­u­tors Fo­rum is be­ing held as a stand­alone in Trinidad, due to the 200th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions.

In 2011 dis­trib­u­tors’ meet­ing was held in con­junc­tion with the An­gos­tu­ra Glob­al Cock­tail Chal­lenge and in 2013 dis­trib­u­tors’ meet­ing was held in con­junc­tion with the An­gos­tu­ra Glob­al Cock­tail Chal­lenge.