Chairman of Desnoes and Geddes Ltd, Richard Byles, has denied that class action suits brought against former distributors of the product, Diageo, in the United States last year influenced the decision to move back to Jamaica.

Byles told the

Jamaica Observer that approximately 16 months ago, about nine months before the class suits surfaced, Diageo — which was the major shareholder in the product then — raised the issue of resuming production of the beer in Jamaica.

“The factory had become more efficient, all that money had been spent on the plant, and the exchange rate made it more competitive for the beers to be exported out of Jamaica,” Byles explained.

“So we had been talking about it for a long time, and planning actively for it, too,” he added.

A class action suit was filed against the manufacturers of Red Stripe beer in the United States last August, alleging that consumers were being deceived into thinking that the beer is made in Jamaica.

The

San Diego Reader andFox News in the US reported then that two people filed in the first week of August, 2015 in federal court in San Diego, California, against Diageo, makers of the beer. They alleged that the company wilfully misled customers into thinking that the beer was being brewed in Jamaica, reports the San Diego Reader.

The suit alleged that Diageo used deceptive phrasing like calling the brew a “Jamaican-Style Lager” and that the brown bottle says it contains the “taste of Jamaica”.

The suit alleges that the shorter, squat packaging is misleading, because it so closely mirrors that of typical Jamaican beer bottles.

In 2012, Diageo moved production of Red Stripe bound for the US from Kingston, Jamaica, to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in the US. Current packaging states that the product is “Brewed & Bottled by Red Stripe Beer Company, Latrobe, PA”. However, Robbins Arroyo, the San Diego law firm representing the plaintiffs, claimed that the text stating that is “obscure” and “not easily noticed by consumers”.

Byles says that the lawsuits are really legal issues, as the bottles do carry the statement that the beer is brewed in the United States.

“It turns on the legal interpretation and I think Diageo thinks strongly that they have a good case. But there are two important points here: (1) the idea to bring back the production of the beer to Jamaica preceded the lawsuits; and (2) the cases were brought against Diageo and not Red Stripe,” he pointed out.

He said that while the idea was conceived some 16 months ago, it has taken some time for the local production to resume, and he does not expect it to start before August.

“It took some planning, plus we had to give the people producing it enough notice,” Byles said, explaining the delay.

He said that when Heineken bought the company last year, they already knew of the plans by Diageo to resume production in Jamaica, “and they simply picked up right from there and made the announcement”, he stated.