Rum cake maker Tortuga International Holdings wants to get a toehold in the European market as well as cement its presence across the Caribbean as part of strategic plans for growth in the local and global markets.

On Wednesday, Tortuga commissioned a 14,000 square-foot bakery at Retirement Cresent, Kingston. Following investment of US$3.5 million in the build-out of the property, Chief Executive Officer Marcus Simmonds says the company will increase productive capacity of rum cakes to tenfold that of its former bakery in Bogue, Montego Bay.

What’s more? Tortuga has employed an additional 60 individuals to carry out company operations.

“The new facility has the ability to produce over two million pounds of rum cakes per year. We will start at one million pound of rum cakes per year, and as demand increases we plan to get to two million pounds in the next five to seven years,” Simmonds told the Jamaica Observer.

“Even though we will initially run at about 50 per cent of the plant’s capacity, up to 90 per cent of production will be for export to the USA and other Caricom countries over the next couple of years,” he continued.

Tortuga plans to sell more products in the British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands, St Martin, as well as Spanish-speaking Caribbean territories.

“Anywhere that we have tourist arrivals of greater than one million people,” he told the Caribbean Business Report.

The increased capacity will come from the company’s shift from batch-type processing to line processing.

The new facility also serves as a shared service centre for finance, human resources, procurement, and administration.

The company saw the need to centralise the bakery operations in a location that was closer to the US, but still has the ability to trade within Caricom. The new bakery will allow Tortuga to double sales over the next three years.

Last fall, Tortuga was granted a licence by the US Government to sell its rebranded 5-year-old and 12-year-old rums in the country. Negotiations were recently finalised with a US liquor distributor and broker for the placement of the rums in its US-wide stores.

The company currently distributes rum cakes with Wal-Mart subsidiaries, Costco and Sam’s Club in the US and is present in 80 stores operated by Total Wines and More.

Founded in Cayman Islands in 1984, Tortuga is part of Jamaica Producers Group of Companies and has bakeries and/or operations in Grand Cayman, USA, Barbados, and The Bahamas.

The company is known for its rum cakes, rum and other gourmet products, including rum-flavoured coffee, sauces, rum fudge, chocolate rum turtles with sea salt, and rum balls.