While the Carib Brewery has largely been riding positive winds into international markets in the past two years, the company has begun to experience some choppy waters.
In recent months, the brand has seen various international events which have led to several supply chain issues.
As a result Carib’s Distributor’s conference, which was held at the Hyatt Regency last week, proved timely.
“This is a conference that we do every two years, and it gives us an opportunity to bring down all of our international partners to Trinidad. It’s essentially an event where we all get together, we collaborate, we share best practices. We get to meet and greet some of our international partners, and it essentially gives us a forum to not only share and collaborate but to thank our distributors for building our brands in each and everyone of their respective markets worldwide,” said Adrian Sabga, Carib Brewery’s managing director of international and business development, at the welcome cocktail reception for the event last Wednesday.
In the past two years Carib has announced expansions across the Caribbean, USA, Canada, the United Kingdom and Greece while also disclosing plans to enter the African and India markets.
Sagba also hailed the recent rollout of Stag in the Bahamas market.
However, despite this progress Sabga admitted that the distributors were also coming to share information about challenges being faced.
He said, “There are multiple challenges in each of these respective markets that they operate in. Whether it be competitive, whether it be financial, whether it be economic challenges. What we do, essentially, is we work with each of them in the respective markets with dedicated resources to ensure that we giving them the right brands at the right price, with the right quality, so that we can ensure that our brands continue to grow in their respective markets as well.”
Managing director for local operations at Carib Brewery, David Welch, admitted that after seeing a recovery post-COVID-19, the brewery’s supply chain had taken a hit in recent months due to several factors— most notably the drought in the Panama Canal, which saw shipping transit drop significantly.
“Let’s say, the last four or five months of this year, things have become complicated again with the Panama Canal, (the) Ukraine, war, the Middle East. All of those things are impacting the supply chain. We would have seen a short-term strike in the US on their ports. That did start to create some panic in the market. So we’ve seen freight costs go up. We’ve seen tightening in the shipping lines. But hopefully, we’ll be able to overcome that, certainly by the end of this year and then start next year fresh again,” said Welch.
He said while this would tie into some challenges with foreign exchange, Carib’s export market had played a role in offsetting some of that difficulty.
“Foreign exchange is always an issue. That’s probably the first call that every managing director makes on mornings when they get to work. What’s our status with foreign exchange? Luckily, again, this is another reason why, strategically, this conference is so important for us. From our exports, we do earn a fair amount of foreign exchange, so we’re not in a situation where we are fully balanced with foreign exchange to our needs. But certainly, every dollar that we make in export is a dollar less than we need to find through the local banking system. So we put a lot of emphasis on that as well,” said Welch.
This point was backed by Sabga, who added that Carib’s foreign exchange generation did help with getting access to and stocking up on required raw materials.
“Whilst Trinidad is our largest brewery, we’re able to source products from our other two regional breweries, St Kitts and Grenada, as well as our US brewery in Cape Canaveral in Florida. So while one of our breweries may run into a supply constraint, we could buffer other stock from our other breweries as well. And in having such a robust supply chain here, we’re able to stock up on a lot of our raw materials. Just to ensure that kind of unexpected supply chain obstructions don’t shut down our business for any extended period of time,” said Sagba.
Welch said, however, the event gave the Carib team a great chance to troubleshoot, as most of the challenges were not being held in isolation.
“It’s not just us informing our distributors. A lot of times, it’s our distributors sharing information with each other so we can benefit. They benefit. But certainly we have a lot of similar challenges,” he said, “Funny enough, along the lines of climate change, it’s not just Trinidad that’s dealing with flooding at different times of the year.”
He said the event would be crucial to building strategies to address these concerns.
“These are all different marketing strategies that we will discuss. But again, I make the point that a lot of times they will inform us as well. Because what works in Barbados, maybe we could tweak and use in Trinidad. Just as what works in Jamaica and what works in Guyana, can work elsewhere in the Caribbean. So it’s really a conference designed to share information so that we could build strategies from there,” he said.
However, Carib’s sector head for beverages, Peter Hall remained buoyed by the brand’s growth.
“We’re now surpassing the level of the business before COVID and the growth is continuing, so we’re very pleased with our progress. We’re seeing double-digit growth, so that’s pretty solid for a beverage business, with most of the growth being driven from our international markets,’ said Hall, “Trinidad is doing reasonably well, but it’s the other countries that are really growing even faster. We’re getting growth from three different places. We’re growing very strongly in the OECS. In places like St Vincent, Antigua, Dominica, we’re growing extremely fast. Guyana has become a very successful and fast growing market for us.
“And also we’re brewing Carib under license further afield from the Caribbean, so in places like Canada and soon to be in India, we’re also getting good growth,” said Hall.
The conference ended on Friday.
