Hampden’s rum establishing foothold in European market

WESTERN BUREAU:

WHEN THE Hussey family, through their Everglades Farms Limited, leased the Trelawny-based Hampden Sugar Estates from Sugar Company of Jamaica Limited in 2009, the initial plan was to expand both sugar and rum production. However, today, 15 years later, the factory is solely into rum manufacturing.

“The production of sugar faced challenges,” explained Andrew Hussey, managing director of Everglades. “These challenges saw Hampden Estates going out of sugar production at the end of 2016/2017 crop. The farms became fully focused on the production of rum and the Jamaica Rum Fire was born.”

While the local consumption of their Rum Fire product is quite pleasing to Hussey, what is bringing him the greatest joy is the foothold Everglades has managed to establish in the global rum market, especially in Europe.

“Everglades decided to tap into this market with the production of a unique brand destined for the European market, especially France, Italy and Germany,” said Hussey. “That is where our distributors are located, and we are in 27 different countries.”

Buoyed by their success in Europe, Hussey said the company has invested in a second warehouse at the Hampden facility, which has significantly improved their capacity to age more rum, which should increase their ability to further meet the demands of the markets in Europe.

“We have invested approximately US$800,000 into a second warehouse, which is capable of holding 7,000 barrels of rum,” said Hussey, who stated that they are using pot still process, which is believed to boost the quality of the rum, to process their rum, which is growing in popularly across several markets.

Pot still rum production is a traditional method of producing rum using a copper pot still. The process involve fermentation, distillation, condensation, redistillation, collection, ageing, blending and bottling.

“Our rum is unique because of how it is processed. It can only be found in liquor boutiques. There are a few pillars to our operation. We are pot still only, no colour is added to our rum, we use natural spring water, and it is 100 per cent made in Jamaica,” said Hussey.

While Everglades produces all its rum in Jamaica, because of the limited amount of sugar being produced in Jamaica, they have had to be looking outside of Jamaica to meet their full demand for the molasses needed for their rum production.

“Only two sugar factories are now operating in Jamaica – the Frome Sugar Factory in Westmoreland, and the Worthy Park Estate, in St Catherine; so, we depend largely on imports of molasses,” said Hussey.

Everglades, which also leased the Long Pond Sugar Factory in 2009, has 400 acres of land in sugar cane production from which they generate raw material. They currently have 140 employees.

“These employees have job security from field workers to the top,” explained Hussey, in noting that the Everglades operation is both viable and sustainable.