CUBA: Sales of Havana Club rum up 15 percent last year, following sluggish 2009
HAVANA (AP) — Sales of Cuba’s flagship rum, Havana Club, rose 15 percent last year as the brand rebounded from a sluggish 2009 — the only year the company has ever posted negative growth.
Havana Club International, formed in 1993 as a partnership between Cuba’s state–run rum monopoly and French wine and spirits maker Pernod Ricard SA, posted sales of 3.8 million cases in 2010, Cuba Ron SA legal adviser Arian Remedios told Cuban news agency Prensa Latina in comments published late Monday.
That is up from 3.3 million cases in 2009 and better than the previous high of 3.4 million in 2008. The company is projecting 4 million cases this year.
Remedios did not give a dollar figure for sales. Each case contains about 2.4 gallons (9 liters) of liquor.
Europe was the leading market with 57 percent of sales, followed by 31 percent in Cuba, 11 percent elsewhere in Latin America and 1 percent in Asia, Prensa Latina reported.
Washington’s decades–old trade embargo against the island prohibits sales of Cuban Havana Club rum in the United States.
Cuba has said in the past that it could increase production to ship 1 million cases to its northern neighbor if the sanctions are lifted, though a trademark dispute would complicate that.
In late March, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Pernod’s claim to the Havana Club brand was not valid in the United States because it concerns a trademark used by a business that was nationalized by the Cuban government.