HAVANA.- Just in the year that marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Tínima brand, an agreement in the final phase of processing between the Spanish brewing company Damm and the Cuban commercial company ALIMCOR S.A., belonging to the Ministry of the Food Industry, pays tribute to the relaunch of this beer brand.
The Havana International Fair has been chosen as the setting for the aforementioned relaunch, for which Excelencias exclusively interviewed Juan González, director of Damm's International Business Unit.
The objective of the agreement between the partners “is to relaunch the Tínima brand, a reference in the province of Camagüey, both for classic and strong beer and for malt, made with high-quality malt and considered the best in Cuba,” said González.
As part of the agreement, “which became a reality after several years of work and which includes production and marketing, the joint venture will recover the Tínima brewery, currently in disuse, which will result in direct employment for at least 300 people, once it is up and running.”
Going into details of the strategy to follow, he explained that the first thing we have done has been to recover the original recipes for the Tínima beer, classic and strong, and improve them with a touch more suited to the consumer's taste; in the case of malt, we do maintain the original recipe.
It is estimated that the factory's renovation will last around two years; in the meantime, we will begin to bring in products that we will manufacture in our facilities in Spain. It is a way of building the market with the aim that when we can produce, within two years, we will have a volume that will allow us to start with a practically full factory.
The main market, he said, will obviously be Cuba, but I believe that the beer is born with sufficient quality and with a brand powerful enough to be able to launch it into other markets.
The director of Damm's International Business Unit, which serves its products in more than 130 countries, explained that “it is the largest beverage group and the largest brewer in Spain in terms of volume, based on an important portfolio (…) as part of the international business, we have a team of almost 300 people in the global sphere, with the United Kingdom and China being the most important headquarters.”
This agreement represents for Damm a new milestone in the company's internationalization and the first manufacturing project on the American continent. In this way, Damm would strengthen its international industrial capacity, which already has 17 factories in the Iberian Peninsula and has a production center in Portugal and a brewery in the United Kingdom, where it produces and packages more than 20 million hectoliters of beer, water, soft drinks, milk, and milkshakes. In 2023, its turnover reached 2,061 million euros and the company's total workforce stood at 5,765 people.
Founded in 1876 by the Alsatian master brewer August Kuentzmann Damm, in Barcelona, the company markets a wide portfolio of premium beers, including Estrella Damm, Victoria, Daura, Free Damm, Inedit, and Voll-Damm.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez