Not only is it said that Rum originated in Barbados but this tiny island also has the distinction of being home to the world's oldest known such spirit - the 300 year old Mount Gay Rum.
Mount Gay Rum emerged from humble beginnings at a plantation in Barbados' northern parish of St. Lucy; indeed a legal deed dated February 1703 has established that rum was being produced at Mount Gay at that time. Changing hands over the years, it was in 1908 that the estate was bought by white Barbadian planter Aubrey Ward, who fathered a total of 62 children of both races and at the same time expanded the little rum production he found taking place. Working closely with a friend, he also later established the marketing arm, Mount Gay Distilleries Limited, and on his death in 1948 he left that as well as 1,792 acres of sugar lands and the refinery, which is still owned by the Ward family, some of whom also continue to have minority interests in Mount Gay Distilleries Limited.
Mount Gay Rum has become familiar to those who follow the America's Cup and other prestigious regattas around the world. Connoisseurs of fine spirits in over sixty countries also know the name Mount Gay, thanks to the early marketing efforts of a group of Barbadians and more recently the dynamism of the French owned multinational Remy Cointreau, of which Mount Gay Distilleries became a subsidiary in 1989 - a synergy hailed as a fine example of the new kind of partnership required in a globalised trading environment.
Having sold the brand name to Remy, the Refinery then entered a 30-year agreement to exclusively supply the bottlers with the raw rum that is then aged and bottled by the distillery. In the ten years of this relationship, Barbados has become the hub of Remy Cointreau's regional operations, which include exports of rum and other products, including Absolut Vodka, and has seen rum sales grow by 80 percent over the decade and warehousing capacity expanded by 69 percent.
Eclipse, the flagship Mount Gay Rum brand, continues to grow in the major domestic and duty free markets, while Extra Old has exhibited growth of over 100% in the past 5 years.
The USA is the largest single market while Mount Gay continues to put in sterling performances in the United Kingdom, Canada, Europe and, of course, Barbados and the Caribbean. By the end of February 2003, Mount Gay Rum was boasting of sales of 5 million bottles worldwide and several top international awards for excellence.
Chairman of Remy Cointreau, Mrs. Dominique Heriard-Dubreuil, anticipates that full international status would be reached in another five years, with the doubling of worldwide sales. "We are seeding in many of those countries a brand which does not yet have a big volume but it has a high reputation, so this is the best place to start and grow for the future," she observed as the company celebrated the brand's 300th anniversary in Barbados, maintaining that its heritage and Barbadian base must never be lost. "The Bajan flavour is vital," she declared.
One member of the Owen Arthur cabinet, former Economic Development Minister now Education Minister, Reginald Farley, highlighted the relationship between Mount Gay and Remy Cointreau as a good example of partnership between developed and developing states.
"For those of you who may have doubts about the capacity of small states to play a meaningful role in the new globalized environment, Mount Gay should give you both the spirit and the reasons to dispel those doubts," he said. Pointing to the challenge facing producers in small countries like Barbados, Mr. Farley described Mount Gay as " Perhaps an object lesson as to how we need to approach this new century and this new period of globalisation. We need, where necessary, to engage in international joint ventures with enterprises which have sufficient economic and management clout as well as the necessary contacts to let our little secrets here be known."
While the Barbadian company's association with Remy has opened markets for Mount Gay in Europe and elsewhere, on the other hand the benefit for Remy has been in being able to get some of its other products into the Caribbean and Latin American markets.
"Today we want to expand in Latin America, for instance, but we know that the overall situation in Latin America is not very stable. A strong base in Barbados for us is first of all much closer to the continent and, secondly, it also helps to establish the base we want and the teams that will explore the continent better," explained Mrs. Heriard-Dubreuil.
To this same end, Managing Director of Mount Gay Distilleries and Remy Caribbean and Latin America, Jean-Noel Renault, noted that they were looking for further growth in the Caribbean and Latin America by using Barbados' bilateral and Caricom agreements with other countries.
Reproduced from Business Barbados 2004 with the permission of Caribbean Business Publications.
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