An­gos­tu­ra has changed the la­bels on its lat­est prod­ucts to in­clude the num­ber of calo­ries per drink and warn­ing signs re­lat­ed to un­der­age drink­ing, dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence and drink­ing while preg­nant.

In a press re­lease is­sued this af­ter­noon, An­gos­tu­ra stat­ed that “con­sumers need to bet­ter un­der­stand what they are pur­chas­ing and drink­ing.”

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from An­gos­tu­ra:

An­gos­tu­ra® has in­tro­duced new la­bels with ad­vi­sories on its lat­est prod­ucts. The up­grad­ed la­bels on White Oak Wa­ter­mel­on Flavoured Rum in­form con­sumers about the num­ber of calo­ries per drink and warn­ing signs such as un­der­age con­sump­tion, dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence, and drink­ing dur­ing preg­nan­cy.

This lat­est ini­tia­tive puts An­gos­tu­ra® ahead of many of its in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts with the in­tro­duc­tion of the new la­bels which will now in­crease the in­for­ma­tion on our rum prod­ucts to con­sumers. The White Oak Wa­ter­mel­on Flavoured Rum was launched in Au­gust and it’s the lat­est ad­di­tion to An­gos­tu­ra’s rum port­fo­lio. The la­bels on White Oak Sor­rel and Co­conut Flavoured Rums al­so have warn­ing signs and a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty state­ment. The ad­vi­so­ry la­bels will be in­tro­duced to all new prod­ucts and will be rolled out to ex­ist­ing prod­ucts with­in the next year.

An­gos­tu­ra’s CEO (Ag.) Ian Forbes says, “This is re­al­ly a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion for us, be­cause con­sumers need to bet­ter un­der­stand what they are pur­chas­ing and drink­ing. It has co­in­cid­ed well with the launch of sev­er­al new and ex­cit­ing prod­ucts from us, such as our White Oak Wa­ter­mel­on Flavoured Rum. De­spite a dif­fi­cult year for the in­dus­try with the pan­dem­ic af­fect­ing sales, we will con­tin­ue to work to­wards en­sur­ing these new la­bels are on all of our brands.” Mr. Forbes says while this is an ex­pen­sive process, An­gos­tu­ra sees this lat­est im­prove­ment on the la­bels of its rum prod­ucts as the com­pa­ny’s du­ty. He added that An­gos­tu­ra has al­ways led by ex­am­ple and he hopes oth­er com­pa­nies will al­so fol­low suit.

The West In­dies Rum & Spir­its Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIRSPA) says the agree­ment with pro­duc­ers to im­prove their la­bels was made in mid-2019, with a com­mit­ment to im­ple­ment with­in a 24-month pe­ri­od, to al­low time to ad­just pack­ag­ing and to de­sign and phase in new la­bels.

CEO of WIRSPA, Vaughn Ren­wick says, “This is a ground-break­ing com­mit­ment by rum brands, like An­gos­tu­ra, as it takes time to de­sign new la­bels and to phase out old stock and some­times even bot­tles have to be changed. It’s an ex­pen­sive process. We are pleased to see

that An­gos­tu­ra has been able to im­ple­ment the changes on some brands al­ready, es­pe­cial­ly bear­ing in mind the tremen­dous fi­nan­cial and lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges posed by the COVID pan­dem­ic.”

An­gos­tu­ra re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that our cus­tomers are kept in­formed about all our prod­ucts.