Angostura launches solar power for Bitters plant

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

An al­most $8 mil­lion in­vest­ment is now pow­er­ing one of T&T’s most recog­nis­able ex­ports, with An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd switch­ing its bit­ters bot­tling plant to so­lar en­er­gy as part of a wider sus­tain­abil­i­ty push.

The sys­tem, in­stalled in De­cem­ber and of­fi­cial­ly launched on Tues­day at the House of An­gos­tu­ra, now sup­plies re­new­able en­er­gy to the fa­cil­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing the com­pa­ny’s glob­al­ly recog­nised bit­ters.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath de­scribed the move as a sig­nif­i­cant shift in how lo­cal in­dus­try ap­proach­es en­er­gy use.

“This is an al­most $8 mil­lion in­vest­ment in terms of chang­ing the tra­jec­to­ry in terms of the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny. And in or­der for many multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies around the world to have sur­vived, they in­vest­ed in re­new­able en­er­gies. Chair­man Gary Hunt po­si­tioned the tran­si­tion as both a com­mer­cial and strate­gic move, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ex­port mar­kets where en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards are in­creas­ing­ly shap­ing con­sumer de­mand,” Padarath high­light­ed.

“It is an easy pro­gres­sion for­ward. It’s the way the world is head­ing, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty is very im­por­tant for us, es­pe­cial­ly in the first world mar­kets. It is some­thing that I fo­cus on. And al­ready our bit­ters is 85 per cent of the world mar­ket. This even takes us fur­ther. No oth­er bit­ters pro­duc­tion could come close to what we are do­ing with our pro­duc­tion, so it again sep­a­rates the unique­ness of the prod­uct that we’re of­fer­ing the world,” Hunt said.

The so­lar in­stal­la­tion now pow­ers key el­e­ments of the pro­duc­tion line, in­clud­ing fill­ing, la­belling, con­vey­ors, and pack­ag­ing sys­tems. The shift is ex­pect­ed to re­duce re­liance on tra­di­tion­al elec­tric­i­ty while im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and cost man­age­ment over time.

Hunt con­firmed the com­pa­ny is look­ing to ex­pand so­lar across oth­er fa­cil­i­ties at its Laven­tille com­pound, sig­nalling a broad­er tran­si­tion to re­new­able en­er­gy with­in its op­er­a­tions.

He said the project goes be­yond in­fra­struc­ture, de­scrib­ing it as a step to­wards em­bed­ding sus­tain­abil­i­ty in­to the com­pa­ny’s long-term strat­e­gy.
“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not just a slo­gan for us; it is a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. This is not sim­ply the in­stal­la­tion of so­lar pan­els; it is the pow­er­ing of one of our most icon­ic pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties by clean, re­new­able en­er­gy. The very bit­ters that car­ry the name of T&T to bars, restau­rants, and homes across the globe will now be pro­duced in a man­ner that is smarter, clean­er, and more sus­tain­able,” he stat­ed.
Hunt not­ed that the sys­tem im­proves re­li­a­bil­i­ty while re­duc­ing de­pen­dence on tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy sources, po­si­tion­ing the com­pa­ny for more sta­ble pro­duc­tion in the years ahead.

“This project en­sures re­li­a­bil­i­ty, it en­sures ef­fi­cien­cy and un­in­ter­rupt­ed pro­duc­tion, while sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing our de­pen­dence on tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy sources,” Hunt said.

The ini­tia­tive al­so forms part of a wider push to in­te­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty across the busi­ness, with so­lar al­ready sup­port­ing fork­lift charg­ing sta­tions and plans in place to ex­tend us­age to ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ings.

Padarath said the project should serve as a mod­el for oth­er com­pa­nies, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when en­er­gy costs and sus­tain­abil­i­ty pres­sures are ris­ing.

“It’s a bench­mark for An­gos­tu­ra, but al­so the rest of the na­tion who are in­volved, par­tic­u­lar­ly the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, in terms of the way for­ward util­is­ing re­new­able en­er­gies and al­so self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty through so­lar,” Padarath out­lined.

He not­ed that while the shift may re­duce re­liance on the na­tion­al grid, it cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­pa­nies to rein­vest sav­ings in­to ex­pan­sion.

“As they go along in­to the months and years ahead, the in­volve­ment with re­spect to the pay­ments to T&TEC is more mon­ey that they will save, and they will now be able to put that in­to oth­er us­es in terms of ex­pand­ing the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny,” Padarath said. The min­is­ter al­so point­ed to the broad­er trans­for­ma­tion un­der­way at An­gos­tu­ra, link­ing the in­vest­ment to on­go­ing ef­forts to strength­en op­er­a­tions and po­si­tion the com­pa­ny for growth.