Pernod Ricard opened yesterday in San José de Cuba a new distillery of rum, in the presence of 350 people, including Vice President Carlos Lage and many Ministers. The French group brought all of the capital, i.e. EUR 50 million, necessary for the construction of this unit, which should enable it to double by 2013, the current capacity of the Havana Club rum. 2.6 Million, it should go to 5 million cases.
The Cuban State, partner at 50 through the Havana Club International joint venture created in 1993, is committed to pay half of the sum in long term granted by the French industrialist. "It is a quite exceptional investment in Pernod Ricard, which was more used to buy assets to build factories", says Marc Beuve-Méry, Director General of Havana Club International.
And if it remains vague about the timing of the return on investment, it is however very verbose on the multiple interests of the operation. The growth in sales of 15 registered by the Cuban brand for several years in a global market of rum which progresses by 3 per year convinced him of the need to increase its supply of very substantially.
The popularity of cocktails
International including Bueno Vista Social Club and Cuban music craze, the opening of a large number of bars Cubans abroad and the curiosity to one of the last bastions of communism very strongly stimulated sales. They rose from 400,000 cases to 2.6 million in 13 years.
Exported for 70 of the volumes, the Cuban brand is now its first markets in Europe, Italy, Spain and Germany in mind. The popularity of cocktails won everywhere and Havana Club has been to introduce the rum Brown, old, five, seven, ten years of age. A way to groom the pawn to Bacardi, which created the fashion with its white rum. "Rum which has aged and the color of the drums, where the Scots were previously developed Bourbon, is sold two times more expensive than the standard three-year rum", said Marc Beuve-Méry.
Number two world "surinvestit" in Havana Club, with the hope to make it one of the first ten brands of spirits in the world in seven years. Havana Club is now the third brand of rum behind American Bacardi, which controls about half of the world market with 40 million credit and Captain Morgan, the British Diageo property, first global group. Sales of rum in the world increased two times faster than the spirits market.
Banned in the United States, where the Cuban products are beaten embargo, Havana Club has the means to double its growth on the other hand, provide the leaders of Pernod Ricard. But the remote US market for 100 kilometres is the first world. And the proximity of a normalization of relations between Washington and Havana, after the disappearance of the Castro regime, in tenfold interest. The 17 hectare site of the new Distillery, "the equivalent of 35 football fields", likes to say André Leymat, industrial Director, allows to consider "of multiple extensions" and several doublings of production at the whim of market.
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