Worthy Park has high hopes for rum tour
SUGAR AND rum producer Worthy Park Estates has introduced a rum tour, which it sees, initially, as a way to raise awareness of the company’s brand but a revenue earner in the long run.
Worthy Park invested just about $6 million to retrofit the facilities to accommodate visitors at the more than 300-year-old estate, said Co-Managing Director Gordon Clarke.
The company added a visitor centre, developed a video of the history of the company, and retrofitted parts of the distillery for the 90-minute tour.
Its investment comes in the wake of the rejuvenated Appleton Estate Tour, into which J. Wray & Nephew Limited pumped US$10 million and rebranded the experience around its world-famous blender Joy Spence.
The Appleton Tour is highly popular among both locals and tourists.
St Catherine-based Worthy Park expects its new attraction to grow over time, adding small but sustained revenue to the business. Part of that drive involves registering the tour as an attraction with Tourism Product Development Company, or TPDCo.
Clarke said environmental approval from the National Environmental Planning Agency, or NEPA, was an important step towards getting TPDCo’s stamp of approval. NEPA has given its approval, its September board decisions show.
Last week, 10 visitors took the Worthy Park rum tour, said Clarke. Visitors pay US$20 if they are locals and up to US$70 if they are foreigners who require transportation.
“So there is little to no volume because we have just started,” said Clarke.
So far, most of the visitors have been bloggers and tour operators.
“At the moment, it is more of a marketing drive than a revenue earner,” he added.
Worthy Park went into branded rum production in 2005 under the Rum-Bar label following the completion of its new distillery. More recently, it added a single estate rum under the Worthy Park label. Over the past decade, the company reportedly invested about US$20 million in the rum operation.
The company, which has rums ageing up to 14 years, offers five types of aged rums for tasting on the tour.
Worthy Park Estates was established in 1670 when it was reportedly gifted to Lt Francis Price for his services to Cromwell during the English capture of Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655.
The estate grew from just under 400 acres to over 10,000 acres when it was purchased by Frederick Clarke in 1918.
Last year, Wisynco Group acquired a 35 per cent stake in the company and became its distributor.