PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

De­spite rum sales in Trinidad and To­ba­go de­clin­ing last year com­pared to 2020, An­gos­tu­ra has still record­ed an in­crease in its prof­its.

The com­pa­ny re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $158.3m for the fis­cal year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2021, which rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of 8.7% over the pri­or fis­cal year.

In the com­pa­ny’s An­nu­al Re­port for 2021, Act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ian Forbes said, “De­spite the con­tin­u­ing im­pact of the coro­n­avirus, the Group record­ed prof­it be­fore tax of $214.5 mil­lion which rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of 0.8% or $1.7 mil­lion over the pri­or com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od.”

The An­gos­tu­ra CEO said this con­tin­ued the up­ward trend of rev­enue, gross prof­it (GP) and re­sults from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties over the five-year pe­ri­od 2017 to 2021.

He said, “Rev­enue in­creased by 1.8% to $921.6 mil­lion com­pared to $905.4 mil­lion record­ed in 2020, mak­ing this the fifth con­sec­u­tive year of top line growth fol­low­ing a pe­ri­od of rev­enue con­trac­tion from 2015 to 2016. In ad­di­tion, the rev­enue achieved in 2021 was al­so the high­est rev­enue record­ed by the Com­pa­ny over the past sev­en years,”

Forbes said this was “a mon­u­men­tal achieve­ment de­spite the dif­fi­cul­ty and un­cer­tain­ty of the sec­ond year of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, with se­vere chal­lenges in the lo­cal and glob­al econ­o­my. “

The An­gos­tu­ra CEO how­ev­er not­ed, “The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic had a more se­vere im­pact on Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2021 vs 2020 with re­duced con­sumer spend­ing due to un­em­ploy­ment and re-pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of ex­pens­es to more es­sen­tial items, as well as high­er num­bers of COVID-19 cas­es, hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions and death.”

Chair­man Ter­rence Bharath said de­spite the de­cline in rev­enue in T&T, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to push in­no­va­tion

“Rev­enue in the lo­cal mar­ket de­clined by 1%, or $8m. How­ev­er, An­gos­tu­ra con­tin­ued its in­no­va­tion dri­ve which boost­ed rev­enues, with new prod­ucts in every seg­ment. In the pre­mi­um rum seg­ment, the launch of An­gos­tu­ra Trib­ute and Sym­pho­ny in De­cem­ber was well re­ceived. In stan­dard rums, White Oak Grape­fruit and Pineap­ple flavoured rums boost­ed lo­cal con­sump­tion. The in­no­v­a­tive Tam­boo Spiced Rum was launched lo­cal­ly and will be ex­pand­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in 2022,” Bharath said.

The re­port stat­ed while lo­cal brand­ed busi­ness sales were low­er by $3.5m or 1% main­ly due to re­duced lo­cal rum and oth­er al­co­hol sales as bars and restau­rants were closed for the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the year and re-opened with re­stric­tions, the rev­enue at­tained in 2021 was due pri­mar­i­ly to strong growth in the mar­kets in Eu­rope, Mid­dle East, Africa and Aus­tralia in­clud­ing the Unit­ed King­dom of $20.3m or 30% as the re­gion re­cov­ered from the pan­dem­ic ef­fects in 2020, bars and restau­rants re-opened and ac­tiv­i­ties re­sumed in many coun­tries across that re­gion.