RED Stripe has made two appointments geared at aggressively growing its local business in 2012.

In what the company said is a step to meet consumer demands with new product offerings, the beer manufacturer hired Rory Burchenson as innovation manager. Burchenson joined the company on November 1 and will be responsible for the roll out of all new brands and products. He has extensive project management experience having spent six years at telecoms giant Digicel where, most recently, he was a project manager on the US multimillion- dollar 4G BroadBand project. Soon after the 4G project was completed, he was charged with the management of operations for the 4G department and then appointed project manager for the Claro-Digicel Merger and Cloud Computing ICT roll out.

According to Red Stripe in a press release on Friday, the focus on innovation is already yielding results with the company set to release several new products in the second half of its financial year which ends June 30.

Red Stripe’s head of marketing Jomo Cato said among the innovations due in the next six months are a Malta variant, a new beer, an addition to the stout offerings and possibly a rum.

“Innovation contributed significantly to the growth of Diageo in the past year and this is a clear indicator that if we want to continue to grow our business and keep consumers excited about our brands, innovation will play a big role,” said Cato.

“We’re looking at a record year of Innovations for Red Stripe. We launched Red Stripe Light Flavours a few months ago and the feedback has been encouraging and has signaled that consumers want new ways to enjoy our brands and that’s what our focus on innovation will deliver.”

Latin America and the Caribbean is the fastest- growing market for Red Stripe’s parent company, Diageo, and innovative brands such as Nuvo and Haig Supreme have contributed significantly to the company’s growth.

Another area Red Stripe says it is looking to capitalise on through innovation is with its partnership with Heineken.

Heineken International holds a 15 per cent stake in Red Stripe and Cato said Heineken is a valued partner and one of the better innovators in the industry.

“We are excited about deepening this relationship to bring even more vibrancy and innovation to the beer category,” he said. “Nasha-Monique Douglas recently joined us bringing significant depth to the team and we are excited about the future.”

Cato said, like Burchenson, the appointment of Nasha-Monique Douglas as Heineken brand manager represents a vigorous effort by Red Stripe to recruit the best marketers in the island who will bring innovative ideas to meet consumer demands.

Before joining Red Stripe, Douglas spent her formative years in the telecommunications industry — first with Digicel as marketing communications manager and, more recently, at Flow as the brand marketing manager.

During this time she led the transformation of the Flow brand through innovative brand building activities, increasing Flow’s brand awareness in the market. Douglas also led the relaunch of Flow’s Corporate Services and Columbus Business Solutions.