Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon, is hop­ing that An­gos­tu­ra's re­sump­tion of ex­ports to Chi­na will con­tin­ue to boost for­eign ex­change re­turns to the coun­try.

An­gos­tu­ra yes­ter­day sent its third large-scale ship­ment of prod­ucts to Chi­na un­der a dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ment with Caribbean Com­mer­cial Man­age­ment (Hangzhou) Com­pa­ny Ltd., a sub­sidiary of First Caribbean Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd. (FCMC), which was signed in Ju­ly 2024.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$1M worth of An­gos­tu­ra Or­ange Bit­ters, Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters and var­i­ous An­gos­tu­ra pre­mi­um rums left for Chi­na in this ship­ment.

A to­tal of TT$3 mil­lion in An­gos­tu­ra goods have en­tered the Chi­nese mar­ket un­der the agree­ment thus far.

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon said, “The event is a mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion for both com­pa­ny and coun­try as it ex­pands reach in the glob­al mar­ket. The ship­ment to Chi­na is a strate­gic move by An­gos­tu­ra to strength­en trade re­la­tions and show­case crafts­man­ship, qual­i­ty and the her­itage of the com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts on the world stage.”

The Min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged the on­go­ing for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion could on­ly be helped by such an arrange­ment.

"More and more cas­es will con­tin­ue to go, and more and more for­eign ex­change earned, adding to the cof­fers of Trinidad and To­ba­go and of course giv­ing ease to the is­sue that we have and the call that we have in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty for for­eign ex­change. This is the kind of ac­tion that we want. More ex­ports to en­able us to earn more for­eign ex­change," said Gopee-Scoon.

The Min­is­ter added, “With these ship­ments, An­gos­tu­ra aims to pen­e­trate the cock­tail mar­ket seg­ments and ce­ment An­gos­tu­ra’s Bit­ters and rums as a key in­gre­di­ent in Chi­na’s ris­ing cock­tail in­dus­try. In this re­gard, both ex­porter and im­porter are work­ing to­geth­er to build ex­cit­ing ac­ti­va­tion plans to bring the spir­it of Trinidad and To­ba­go to the Peo­ple of Chi­na.”

Yang Han, Chargé d' Af­faires of the Em­bassy of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na in Trinidad and To­ba­go, said, “The ship­ment marks an­oth­er suc­cess­ful en­try of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts in­to the Chi­nese mar­ket.”

He said, “[the oc­ca­sion] serves as a per­fect gift, in terms of trade co­op­er­a­tion, to cel­e­brate the 50th an­niver­sary of diplo­mat­ic ties be­tween Chi­na and Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Mr. Han al­so not­ed that the ship­ment is the re­sult of per­sis­tent en­deav­our from An­gos­tu­ra, FCMC, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and all oth­er stake­hold­ers in­volved as well as the suc­cess­ful pro­mo­tion of prod­ucts at the Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port Ex­po (CI­IE) since 2021.

An­gos­tu­ra had been ex­port­ing to Chi­na in 2019 but had paused in 2022 to eval­u­ate its mar­ket­ing strate­gies.