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Pernod will ‘keep investing’ in US post-election

French spirits group Pernod Ricard has confirmed it will “keep on investing” in the US, its biggest market, following Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election.

Pernod will keep investing in the US following Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election

Pernod reported “solid and encouraging” single-digit sales growth in 2015/16 driven by the US, where sales grew 4%, and says it will continue to support growth in the market following the election results.

“The people of the US have now spoken,” a spokesperson for Pernod Ricard told The Spirits Business.

“As a global actor of our industry with a very strong footprint in the US, our number one market, we will keep on investing in the global number one market for wine and spirits in order to support our solid growth as we have been doing for decades.”

Pernod awaits details on Trump’s position on Cuba – where it makes Havana Club though a joint venture with the government.

The firm has been waiting for decades to sell the rum in the US, and will only be permitted to do so when a long-standing trade embargo is lifted.

The route to the US market has been far from smooth – Pernod faces a legal battle from Bacardi, which markets its own Havana Club rum, made in Puerto Rico, in the US.

In February this year, Pernod Ricard confirmed the trademark for its own Havana Club rum, owned by Cubaexport, had been officially renewed in the US until 2026.

The following month, Bacardi asked a US district court to “strike” the Havana Club trademark from the official register in an ongoing battle with Cubaexport over the rights to the brand name in the country.

Bacardi claims to have acquired the US rights to Havana Club from the brand’s founders, the Arechabala family. The Cuban government seized the family’s rum-making facilities and personal assets during the revolution, without compensation.

Earlier this year, Barack Obama made the first visit to Havana by a US president in 88 years, and has since relaxed trade and travel restrictions – easing limits on how much rum Americans can bring back from Cuba for personal use.

However, at a rally in Miami in September, Trump pledged to reverse Obama’s steps to open relations unless Cuban leaders allowed religious freedoms and freed political prisoners.

 

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