PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Gary Hunt said the com­pa­ny is in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports that a for­mer se­nior An­gos­tu­ra em­ploy­ee has launched her own ver­sion of the com­pa­ny’s fa­mous Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters.

“Let’s have all the facts be­fore us and then we’ll be able to give a prop­er re­sponse to the mat­ter,” said Hunt, when asked about the is­sue at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day ahead of An­gos­tu­ra’s ship­ment of 420, the com­pa­ny’s ready-to-drink (RTD) bev­er­age to Bar­ba­dos and the first ship­ment of the prod­uct to Suri­name.

“It’s some­thing that needs to be care­ful­ly looked at. It’s a del­i­cate mat­ter so we need to spend time and re­al­ly get all the facts be­fore we re­spond prop­er­ly and we will re­spond prop­er­ly,” said Hunt in re­sponse to fur­ther ques­tions on the mat­ter.

He con­tin­ued, “As I said we are go­ing to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter ful­ly and we will re­spond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.” Ac­cord­ing to a news­pa­per re­port ear­li­er this week, Vidia Dood­nath, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions at An­gos­tu­ra, launched Ca­roni Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters at a pri­vate event.

This news was shock­ing, giv­en the bit­ters recipe which had helped es­tab­lish An­gos­tu­ra two cen­turies ago, has been a guard­ed com­pa­ny se­cret since then.

How­ev­er, Hunt was adamant the fo­cus of the event should be on the ship­ment of the ready-to-drink prod­uct, which was launched in April.

Dur­ing his speech at the event, Hunt not­ed that 420 has been very suc­cess­ful across the re­gion since its launch with sales across the re­gion in An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, the British Vir­gin Is­lands, Do­mini­ca, St Lu­cia, Grena­da, St Kitts, and St Vin­cent. De­mand has ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions.

“The Gen Z’s and the mil­len­ni­als are grav­i­tat­ing to­wards the RTD’s and look­ing at trends; now re­mem­ber An­gos­tu­ra is a place of in­no­va­tion, it’s in­no­va­tion that is what dri­ves An­gos­tu­ra and it has done so for 200 years suc­cess­ful­ly,” said Hunt.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers, who al­so gave a fea­ture ad­dress at the launch, hailed An­gos­tu­ra’s suc­cess with the prod­uct and its grow­ing ex­ports to Cari­com states.

“By lever­ag­ing these new de­mands and mar­kets, An­gos­tu­ra con­tin­ues to place lo­cal goods on for­eign shelves, while ex­plor­ing op­tions for at­tract­ing in­vest­ment and strength­en­ing glob­al busi­ness con­nec­tions.

“As Trinidad and To­ba­go looks to­ward ad­vanc­ing our eco­nom­ic agen­da, the Gov­ern­ment places sig­nif­i­cant val­ue on the pur­suit of com­mer­cial diplo­ma­cy as a means of pro­mot­ing both our eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests and those of our do­mes­tic com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in ex­ter­nal mar­kets,” he said.

Sobers said T&T places great val­ue on its trade re­la­tion­ships with fel­low Cari­com mem­ber states and the wider Caribbean.

He not­ed that An­gos­tu­ra has con­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ed its com­mit­ment to deep­en­ing trade re­la­tions with T&T’s Cari­com broth­ers and sis­ters.

“This prod­uct launch and the sus­tained suc­cess of the 420 bev­er­age, bears wit­ness to this well-es­tab­lished fact,” said Sobers.