The recent half-year review of the economy by the Central Bank Governor revealed that rum exports are down 31.6 per cent for the first six months of 2025. In fact, they are 38.6 per cent down on the 2023 levels. We are on track for the lowest annual rum export total since 2010.
The same high input costs that make bulk commodity sugar uncompetitive are the very same high input costs that make bulk commodity rum uncompetitive.
The rum industry is expected to subsidise the failing sugar industry by paying more than double the cost for local molasses as compared to our competitors in Jamaica and Guyana. Barbados is the only rum-producing country worse off for using local molasses inputs.
Barbados’ rum exports have survived where sugar exports have failed because beside the failing commodity bulk exports, producers such as Mount Gay and Foursquare have been able to develop a growing and sustainable value added branded export business based on marketing the very highest quality old rums matured and bottled in Barbados.
Barbados is not unique in this experience. Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL) chairman Komal Samaroo reflected recently in an address to the Guyana Chamber of Commerce: “I will venture to say that had DDL not embarked on a new [brand development] strategy more than 25 years ago, it would have today been in an even worse position than the sugar industry.”
Since our distillery was commissioned in 1996, we have expanded from one to three stills, added six maturation warehouses, built a new 53 000 square foot bottling facility, built a new cooperage, installed two sugar mills and built one of the largest reserves of maturing rum in the industry with more than 50 000 casks. The original seven-acre Foursquare factory site has grown to 53 acres.
In 2021, Foursquare was awarded by the International Wines and Spirits Competition (IWSC)
in London, the oldest and most prestigious wines and spirits competition, as Spirits Producer Of The Year, beating out global competition from across all spirits categories. Foursquare was also named IWSC Rum Producer Of The Year for an unprecedented fifth time in 2024. On four occasions, we have won the trophy for the best rum.
Whatever the fortunes of the sugar industry, Foursquare will continue to grow, harvest and mill sugar cane for the production of rum to be exported globally. We will continue to convert an agricultural product into a value-added export.
Barbados is therefore no mere exporter of a manufactured product. It is a globally recognised centre of excellence in artisanal spirit-making. As whisky is to Scotland, champagne to France, Barbados is to rum.
With our innate advantage through centuries-old know-how and our ideal climate, authentic value-added old Barbados rums can overcome our cost hurdles. However, this business faces a threat as long as the intellectual property (IP) “Barbados Rum” remains unprotected.
Authentic brands, those wholly produced on island and exported in bottle, will be undermined by adulterated products of dubious provenance, labelled as “Barbados Rum” in export markets. The lack of registration provides no legal framework for protection. This is entirely analogous to the failure of a brand to register a trademark. Moreover, we are but one board decision away from existing Barbados brands moving their maturing and bottling operations away from the island. They save costs and lose nothing in identity. This situation has reached the level of farce where rum in bulk is being imported into Barbados, locally bottled, sweetened with sugar to give an illusion of quality, and then sold on shelves as “Barbados Rum” notably in the duty-free outlets at our ports of entry. Ostensibly, it is claimed this is rum reimported to Barbados after being “brought up to standard” elsewhere. This echoes colonialism where Barbados’ consumers were required to buy imported Barbados sugar after it was refined in the United Kingdom.
This challenge can be overcome. Government’s original policy supported the producers obtaining IP protection, the natural policy of every valuable wine- and spiritsproducing region. It, however, was abandoned in 2020.
Since Government abandoned its own initiative, Mount Gay, Foursquare and St Nicholas Abbey proceeded with their own application, filed with the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property Office some five years ago in 2020 (a foundational step required by WTO rules) to register the “Barbados Rum” IP through our Geographical Indications Act. These applications remain ignored.
It is worth stressing that while Government laudably created the initiative back in 2016, it is typically producers who pursue the process on their own behalf. Indeed, under the Act, any single producer may apply to register “Barbados Rum”.
It is a sad reflection on us that despite this Act being in place since the early 2000s, not a single Barbados agricultural product has been registered, far less that of rum.
It is also worth stressing that registration and protection of rum matured and bottled in Barbados does not prevent nor is likely to impact bulk exports (the vast majority of which are not ultimately sold as “Barbados Rum”).
One does not trade off one for the other. But without protection, authentic brands face unfair competition and worse, authentic brands lose nothing to move operations outside of the island to level the unfair competition.
The Prime Minister, in a Budget speech some years ago, likened the size of Barbados to the tiny area of cognac from where a multibilliondollar export industry is located. She could have also mentioned scotch whisky which is a £4.5 billion industry.
But here is the difference, cognac has 4 289 individual wine growers and over 3 000 stills in production. Scotch whisky has 138 distilleries. Both industries have robust intellectual property protection and rigorous quality standards enshrined in law in the case of scotch.
Guyana, St Lucia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Martinique and Guadeloupe have all registered Geographical Indications for their rums and have thereby followed the likes of scotch, cognac and champagne in protecting their intellectual property. We are falling behind.
In the Prime Minister’s address at the presentation ceremony for Mount Gay’s Republic Blend, she said that we must: “Recognise that the marketing of our nation is strongest when it reflects who we are . . . . It is important to understand the essence of who we are as a people if we’re going to build on it, and if we’re going to be authentic in what we do and how we represent ourselves.”
This article was written and submitted by Richard Seale, chief executive officer and master distiller at Foursquare Rum Distillery.
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