GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Beer lovers will now have to pay more for their favourite bev­er­age. This as Carib has in­creased its prices by $1.

A state­ment from Robin Cum­ber­batch, Head of Sales at Carib Brew­ery many of the brew­ery’s al­co­holic bev­er­ages will in­crease, with the sug­gest­ed re­tail price (SRP) to the con­sumer go­ing up by $1 per bot­tle/can.

The bev­er­ages af­fect­ed are Carib, Carib Pil­sner, Stag, Carib Blue, Roy­al Ex­tra Stout, Coors, Heineken, Guin­ness, Smirnoff Ice and Blue Moon.

Cum­ber­batch said three of the al­co­holic bev­er­ages which will not in­crease in price are Caribe, Hur­ri­cane Reef and Mack­e­son.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said there will al­so be no in­crease for any prod­uct in the com­pa­ny’s low or no al­co­hol port­fo­lio (soft drinks) such as Shandy, Gin­seng, Mal­ta and Smal­ta.

Cum­ber­batch not­ed that 2021 was a very dy­nam­ic and dif­fi­cult year man­ag­ing the un­cer­tain­ly of the pan­dem­ic and ac­tions tak­en by its man­age­ment, along with glob­al macro­eco­nom­ics.

“As has been well doc­u­ment­ed, spi­ralling raw ma­te­r­i­al and ship­ping costs have af­fect­ed al­most every in­dus­try and man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tion world-wide. Carib Brew­ery was not spared this re­al­i­ty, but we chose to ab­sorb the harsh im­pacts through to the end of 2021.

“Fac­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of same in 2022, we are forced to in­crease prices across many prod­ucts in our port­fo­lio,” he ex­plained.

Fur­ther, Cum­ber­batch said while these in­creas­es are be­ing passed on to the con­sumer, Carib re­mains con­fi­dent that “they are prac­ti­ca­ble enough for our port­fo­lio to help keep the much-need­ed traf­fic at the bars and restau­rants.”

He added that notwith­stand­ing the an­tic­i­pat­ed lin­ger­ing ef­fects, Carib is look­ing for­ward to a brighter and more pre­dictable 2022.

Pres­i­dent of the Bar­keep­ers’ and Own­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (BOATT) Satesh Moonasar said the in­crease was ex­pect­ed as Carib was one of the few al­co­hol pro­duc­ers not to raise its prices last year.

“It was some­thing that we ex­pect­ed. We were look­ing out for quite a while be­cause all al­co­hol providers in the coun­try have al­ready raised their prices. I think Carib would be the last one to raise, but at the same time we need to look at it be­cause there are ris­ing costs from all dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. So bars would have to make the ad­just­ment as well,” he said.

Moonasar fur­ther not­ed that the price in­crease could place more pres­sure on the al­ready reel­ing bar and restau­rant in­dus­try which has suf­fered im­mense­ly through­out the pan­dem­ic due to clo­sures and re­stric­tions in the sec­tor.

“So this is just a dif­fi­cult ob­sta­cle in our way here right now. But again it is what it is and we have to deal with it the best we could. But this will af­fect foot traf­fic in­to busi­ness­es and bars and restau­rants at this time,” he said.

Moonasar added that most like­ly bars will have to start sell­ing beers at a $12 price point based on the no­tice put out by Carib.