Faster Than The Speed of Sangria

How does Yazoo Investments fit into the overall strategy of the CABC Group?

CABC Group began operations in 1992 and Yazoo Investments was born in 2004. So, we have 12 years of experience operating our core business of manufacturing the raw materials to produce bulk rum. Our main activity is to export to Venezuela, and 97% of production is allocated for export. The situation in Venezuela in the export sense has not been ideal, not for political but for economic reasons, so we were looking for a geographic area where it would be easier to export. This is why we chose the Dominican Republic, thanks to its free trade zones. The country fulfilled all the conditions, and we targeted a goal of 10,000 barrels at the beginning, repeating all the processes of manufacturing that we had applied in Venezuela. This was done within six to seven years in collaboration with the Hazin and Santoni families, who are sugar cane producers in the Dominican Republic. We were soon able to produce all the raw materials needed to manufacture the final rum. Nowadays, we have a weekly quantity of 32,000 barrels, far outpacing our original figure of 10,000.

Where are the most important export markets for Yazoo, and where are you looking to expand?

Three years ago we only exported to six countries. In 2015, we were in eight countries and we will finish 2016 in 17. In Europe we export to Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany and also have great volume in the US, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Honduras. We are very proud of the fact that we send products to China. We have three clients in Spain and one in the US and hope to soon have another in the latter. The whole strategy is to expand not only in the countries and destinations where we are exporting but also the volume of clients. No matter the size of the country or client, we focus on the quality of the product. This is incredibly important for our long-term strategy. We have been able to expand our space in the free trade zone in San Pedro to 4,700sqm in order to do the bottling process for private labels. At the moment, we are working on the development of new clients in Central America and for this we have to do market research to understand the flavor and specific features of the product we need depending on the market.

What aspects of the San Pedro Free Zone have contributed to your success?

First are the facilities to operate our entire operations: the imports, supplies, ability to do the bottling, and the facilities to export our brand. This gives us the ability to reach greater levels of efficiency. Within 48 hours, we can achieve a whole delivery and even have the customs process and officers within the free zone, so that helps facilitate the speed of the delivery process. The second advantage is economic, as we do not have any taxes on our export operations. The third advantage is the fact that we have had the opportunity to purchase the land. Some of the companies are renting the area and experience high costs, which is why we decided to locate to the area.

What does Yazoo Investments hope to accomplish in 2017?

This year we will complete two new areas. The first is to replace our old barrels. The barrels are 10 years old, so some of the elements are broken and we need to replace them. The other strategy is to improve the bottling process. Nowadays, we have only one line of bottling but used to have many in Venezuela. We were bottling 14 different kinds of sangria for 14 different customers and would like to implement that here as well. For the moment, the main goal is to add 2,000 more annual barrels to the 40,000 barrels we already produce.