Rum Pundit

[Dood]

I don't know if anyone else reads Rum Pundit, but there are some really interesting events afoot:

Angostura’s offer to acquire a 49.24 per cent stake in Lascelles de Mercado for just under US$1 billion is an attempt by the Trinidadian entity to turn the renown Jamaican rum brand into a powerhouse in the world of spirits and so add value to Angostura.

Carbello further explained that Angostura has been supplying rum to the Barcadi brand, in effect this means that the world- famous Barcadi rum comes from Trinidad.

“What Barcadi does is buy rum from us in Trinidad at 80 cents a litre and sells it, say in England, for 14 pounds a bottle. So right there you see the difference between a commodity and a brand.

“So when CL Financial took over Angostura in 1999, it attempted to move it away from a commodity-based company into a brand-based company, hence the importance of Appleton and Wray & Nephew to us. The potential of both Wray & Nephew and Appleton is untapped.

What we want to do is merge all the Appleton and Wray&Nephew brands with the Angostura brands and list that new company on the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE). We are looking to create something like a Caribbean Diageo. The aim is to get to the point where something is not really rum unless it comes from the Caribbean, rather like Scotch whisky is only the real deal if it comes from Scotland.

[Edward Hamilton]

This makes it sound simple, but that 14 pound liter has the added cost of bottling, freight, import duties, importer profit, retailer profit and that all important quotient of marketing. To date Angostura hasn't found a product that sets it apart from the field, but I'm confident that will change in time.