An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Lead­ing lo­cal rum pro­duc­er An­gos­tu­ra is in­creas­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al foot­print and its ex­port thrust by reen­ter­ing the Chi­nese mar­ket. 

This was marked by a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny that took place yes­ter­day at its Laven­tille head­quar­ters. 

An­gos­tu­ra's chair­man Ter­rence Bharath ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia that the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny ex­it­ed the Chi­nese mar­ket in 2022 as it felt the pre­vi­ous dis­trib­u­tor was not gain­ing trac­tion. 

He said one of the things that con­cerned An­gos­tu­ra is 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, Chi­na, Bharath said.

“We were for­tu­nate to meet Charles Xi­ang Cheng, Caribbean Com­mer­cial Man­age­ment’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and he's a Chi­nese na­tion­al do­ing busi­ness in Trinidad for over 10 years and of­fered us the fa­cil­i­ty of be­ing able to trade with Chi­na. We have done our re­search on him. He ap­par­ent­ly has an of­fice set up in Chi­na so it be­came ap­par­ent to us that this was a win-win sit­u­a­tion,” he said. 

Bharath not­ed that it's not an easy pas­sage to get rums in­to these large coun­tries and An­gos­tu­ra has been mak­ing sev­er­al in­roads.  

“Chi­na was one of them that I had my eye on when I be­came chair­man and one of the things that we hope to come out of this is that we will get some trac­tion in the bars in Chi­na. Now you can't dis­trib­ute rum all over Chi­na be­cause it's so large. We're look­ing at Shang­hai and Bei­jing to start. I un­der­stand they have about 1,500 bars in those ar­eas. They have a vi­brant nightlife,” he de­tailed. 

Bharath added that An­gos­tu­ra has al­ready sent con­tain­ers of rum and bit­ters to Chi­na val­ued at US$250,000. 

At the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Cheng told stake­hold­ers that he was pleased the com­pa­ny ex­pressed enough con­fi­dence in him to ap­point his com­pa­ny as the ex­clu­sive dis­trib­u­tor for Chi­na. 

“It is my dream to get An­gos­tu­ra man­u­fac­tur­ing every day of the year to ful­fill the or­ders for the Chi­nese mar­ket, as every­body knows its size.” 

An­gos­tu­ra cur­rent­ly ex­ports to 170 mar­kets and aims to tap in­to new mar­kets to ex­pand its pre­mi­um rum prod­ucts and bit­ters.