GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­tin­ues to be one of the hall­marks of Carib Brew­ery and the in­tro­duc­tion of its lat­est “lucky” Line 7 epit­o­mis­es this con­cept as it places greater em­pha­sis on en­vi­ron­men­tal prac­tices.

The ini­tia­tive rep­re­sents an in­vest­ment of “slight­ly more than” $200 mil­lion, said ANSA McAL’s bev­er­age sec­tor, head Pe­ter Hall.

Line 7, with its ca­pac­i­ty of 54,000 bot­tles per hour, not on­ly en­hances Carib Brew­ery’s abil­i­ty to meet cur­rent and fu­ture sales de­mand, but al­so pro­vides the flex­i­bil­i­ty to en­gage in strate­gic part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tions.

Speak­ing to Busi­ness Guardian fol­low­ing Tues­day’s com­mis­sion­ing of the line, which took place at the brew­ery in Champs Fleurs, Hall said this was the largest in­vest­ment by the Carib in a decade.

“Over a year that means we can eas­i­ly pro­duce five mil­lion cas­es of beer or more on this line,” he added.

Plans to es­tab­lish Line 7 be­gan in 2019.

The brewey line took so long to be brought to fruition, Hall ex­plained,"be­cause of the size of the in­vest­ment. Ob­vi­ous­ly it’s sig­nif­i­cant in­clud­ing the re­quire­ment to source for­eign cur­ren­cy to pur­chase the equip­ment that we need and al­so the de­sign of the line. It’s a very com­plex op­er­a­tion so that al­so took us some time. We were al­so look­ing through COVID and how the busi­ness was trend­ing to make sure we could con­tin­ue to jus­ti­fy such a big in­vest­ment and project.”

The name “Lucky 7” is not by chance.

Hall said this was the sev­enth pro­duc­tion line built at the brew­ery since 1949.

“So it’s num­ber sev­en, line sev­en,” Hall added.

An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III, ANSA McAL’s group CEO, fur­ther not­ed that the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to make suc­cess­ful in­roads, not on­ly in re­gion­al mar­kets, but it is al­so leav­ing its mark in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

He said in 2016 Carib Glass­works launched a $200 mil­lion con­tain­er-pro­duc­ing fur­nace to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty and en­sure it re­mains com­pet­i­tive.

Since that time, Sab­ga said the group has made in­vest­ments of over $1 bil­lion in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture with­in its bev­er­age busi­ness, in­clud­ing bot­tle wash­ers that sup­port the re­turn­able bot­tle sys­tem in its oth­er re­gion­al brew­eries.

The com­pa­ny al­so re­cent­ly en­tered in­to a con­tract brew­ing arrange­ments for Carib with lo­cal part­ners in Cana­da, Greece and, most re­cent­ly, a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Globus Spir­its to en­ter the In­di­an mar­ket.

In shar­ing oth­er in­sights about the group’s growth, Sab­ga said it al­so com­menced a 50 per cent ex­pan­sion of its chlor-al­ka­li plant to be com­plet­ed dur­ing the third quar­ter of 2024, en­sur­ing that it can ful­ly ser­vice the Cari­com mar­ket.

Not­ing that the jour­ney has not al­ways been easy and that “no man is an is­land,” Sab­ga said now more than ever, there is the need for a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor, in keep­ing the coun­try and the re­gion on the path to­wards a sus­tain­able fu­ture.

“We stand at a piv­otal junc­ture fac­ing the chal­lenge of ex­pand­ing the econ­o­my to en­sure pros­per­i­ty for all our cit­i­zens. In­no­va­tion, as we know, dri­ves com­pe­ti­tion and progress in all sec­tors, mak­ing it a crit­i­cal fac­tor to the suc­cess of both pri­vate en­ti­ties and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies,” Sab­ga said.

For ex­am­ple, he said when pub­lic/pri­vate col­lab­o­ra­tion works to­wards en­vi­ron­men­tal in­tegri­ty, it will help mit­i­gate cli­mate change is­sues in the fu­ture.

“As our busi­ness sec­tors con­tin­ue to grow, we are com­mit­ted to do so sus­tain­ably. We recog­nise that in­te­grat­ing sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices in­to our de­ci­sion-mak­ing process is es­sen­tial to our long-term de­vel­op­men­tal suc­cess of the group. And it’s not just for green­ing but sus­tain­abil­i­ty is good busi­ness,” Sab­ga em­pha­sised.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who was al­so present at the event, as­sured that Gov­ern­ment views sus­tain­able man­u­fac­tur­ing as not just an ide­al, but an op­er­a­tional im­per­a­tive, es­sen­tial for safe­guard­ing the well-be­ing of cur­rent and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

“We will con­tin­ue to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with the pri­vate sec­tor in re­spon­si­bly man­ag­ing our en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts while im­prov­ing busi­ness per­for­mance,” Row­ley said, as he not­ed that smart fac­to­ries are one of the cor­ner­stones of In­dus­try 4.0. He ap­plaud­ed Carib Brew­ery on its in­vest­ment.

“Your lead­er­ship in bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ing is sec­ond-to-none and the in­tro­duc­tion of this new line rais­es the bar of ex­cel­lence even high­er with­in the re­gion and be­yond.

“This new state-of-the art fa­cil­i­ty will for­ti­fy the re­gion­al val­ue chain for bev­er­ages in the Caribbean and open up the po­ten­tial for new link­ages with bev­er­age pro­duc­ers around the world. The de­vel­op­ment of both back­ward and for­ward link­ages will not on­ly strength­en the plant’s sup­ply chain but al­so con­tribute to the growth of re­lat­ed in­dus­tries in the Cari­com re­gion,” Row­ley said.

He added that he looked for­ward to the new prospects for strate­gic part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tions in co-pack­ag­ing and li­censed man­u­fac­tur­ing agree­ments that the new Line 7 would bring to T&T.

Row­ley al­so em­pha­sised that in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy are the cur­ren­cy for suc­cess and re­main at the core of man­u­fac­tur­ing's com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage, in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, eco­nom­ic progress and, more­over, the fu­ture sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, who echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, said over the last four years, lo­cal­ly pro­duced beer re­mained among the top ex­port­ed com­modi­ties from the food and bev­er­age sub­sec­tor.

She said the food and bev­er­age sub­sec­tor grew by 35 per cent, from TT$2.3 bil­lion in ex­ports in 2020 to TT$3.1 bil­lion in 2023.

Gopee-Scoon added that she was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased to learn of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives em­bed­ded with­in Line 7, bol­ster­ing ef­forts to cre­ate sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion through the in­creased pro­mo­tion of re­turn­able glass bot­tles and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious process­es and prac­tices.

Not­ing that con­sumers in T&T are grow­ing more con­scious of the prod­ucts and ser­vices they use, the min­is­ter said they should un­der­stand that their in­formed choic­es can en­cour­age com­pa­nies to adopt prac­tices that are both prof­itable and sus­tain­able.

Gopee-Scoon added that her min­istry re­mains com­mit­ted to paving the way for do­mes­tic com­pa­nies to cap­i­talise on in­ter­na­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties. She said the suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of trade mis­sions plays a piv­otal role in this, boost­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty of ex­ist­ing ex­port­ing com­pa­nies and cre­at­ing po­ten­tial part­ners and buy­ers in tar­get­ed mar­kets.

About Line 7

Pri­or to the in­tro­duc­tion of Line 7, Carib Brew­ery op­er­at­ed two pack­ag­ing lines; one re­turn­able bot­tling line (Line 3 at 66,000 bot­tles per hour) and one dual non-re­turn­able bot­tle/can line (Line 6 at 60,000 bot­tles per hour) for the pro­duc­tion of its full range of bev­er­ages. How­ev­er, with re­turn­able glass bot­tles con­sti­tut­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 per cent of to­tal an­nu­al pro­duc­tion, it be­came ev­i­dent ex­pand­ing pack­ag­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty was need­ed.

The im­pe­tus for the ex­pan­sion was dri­ven by the need to en­sure that Carib Brew­ery had suf­fi­cient pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty to meet fu­ture de­mand.

Recog­nis­ing the im­por­tance of adapt­ing to evolv­ing mar­ket trends and cus­tomer pref­er­ences, the in­tro­duc­tion of Line 7 was deemed es­sen­tial to sup­port in­creased sales de­mand and fa­cil­i­tate the ex­plo­ration of ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, such as co-pack­ing or li­cens­ing agree­ments.