Hampden Estate Expands distillery as sales increase

The demand for Hampden Estate rum products has steadily increased over the past ten years, rising to an almost 50 percent increase in confirmed orders for 2020 over 2019 sales. In response to this unsurpassed demand, Managing Director Andrew Hussey has disclosed that the distillery is now being expanded to boost production.

“The estate, when acquired in 2009 by Everglades Farms Limited was producing only 140,000 LAA (liters of absolute alcohol),” noted Hussey. “This has increased significantly over the past decade with the volume of confirmed orders for 2020 being 1,300,000 LAA.”

A year after the acquisition, Hampden released its first ever bottled rum, Rum Fire, which has received much acclaim, particularly for its popularity among the world’s best bartenders. Later, in 2018 through a joint venture with French and Italian global distribution partners, La Maison & Velier, Hampden created its premium brand, ‘Hampden Estate Single Rum’, tropical aged rums distributed worldwide and lauded by rum connoisseurs around the world, with over 40,000 bottles being sold in Europe and the U.K. alone in the first quarter of distribution.

More recently, it has launched its ‘Great House’ rum which was originally intended to be sold locally in the distillery gift shop but which, due to worldwide demand, is now being produced for the international market.

Hampden also produces unaged rum which is used in the food, liquor, and perfume industries.

The diversification of products and increased demand have resulted in significant expansion of the Hampden Estate distillery with the following being accomplished:

• A new aging warehouse, with the additional capacity of 8000 barrels has been constructed. It features a state-of-the-art fire detection and suppression system
• Two new 5,000-gallon copper pot stills were acquired, one of which is already in use while the other will be activated by the end of May, with a projected 45 percent increase in output.
• New fermentation vessels are being built to meet the upgraded distillation capacity.
• Increased capacity for the handling of the rum waste “dunder” is also being expanded.  The dunder is reprocessed in the Hampden fermentation formula and is also used as a supplement fertilizer on the cane field, a feature that adds to the uniqueness of Hampden rum.

• A small preowned crushing mill that has the capacity to crush ten tons per hour was also reinstated on the distillery compound in April thus reducing transportation and cane production cost.
• To improve the operational efficiency of the boiler and reduce the distillery’s environmental footprint, Hampden Estate through a partnership with New Fortress Energy will be converting to LNG and discontinuing the use of Bunker C oil.
• To continue its mission to make the distillery more environmentally friendly, a new 200KW Microturbine is also being installed. This will provide 97% of all electrical power for the distillery once completed and will help to reduce the distillery’s carbon footprint by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 663 tons of CO2e or 14% annually compared to business as usual.

“These new changes will meet Hampden distillery’s needs for the coming years,” said Hussey, “even as we ensure that the facility is energy efficient and our highly acclaimed products keep up with increasing demand.”