Carib Brewery brewers earn international diplomas in Germany

Three brew­ers from Carib Brew­ery have com­plet­ed the World Brew­ing Acad­e­my (WBA) Diplo­ma in Brew­ing at the Doe­mens Acad­e­my in Ger­many, fol­low­ing a three-month in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme fo­cused on ad­vanced brew­ing sci­ence and pro­duc­tion.

The pro­gramme pro­vides brew­ing pro­fes­sion­als with tech­ni­cal train­ing cov­er­ing every stage of the brew­ing process and at­tracts par­tic­i­pants from coun­tries in­clud­ing Japan, Chi­na, the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co, Brazil and Ar­genti­na.

The three grad­u­ates—Make­da Wilkes of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Shorna Black­man of Grena­da and Ka­reem Rawl­ins of St Kitts and Nevis—were spon­sored by Carib Brew­ery to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gramme along­side brew­ers from around the world.

The course cov­ered the full brew­ing val­ue chain, from raw ma­te­r­i­al se­lec­tion and malt pro­duc­tion to wort pro­duc­tion, fer­men­ta­tion, mat­u­ra­tion and pack­ag­ing.

Par­tic­i­pants al­so re­ceived in­struc­tion from brew­ing spe­cial­ists and in­dus­try sup­pli­ers and com­plet­ed a two-week tech­ni­cal study tour of brew­eries in Ger­many and Bel­gium, where they ob­served dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion sys­tems, tech­nolo­gies and qual­i­ty man­age­ment prac­tices.

Wilkes said the ex­pe­ri­ence broad­ened her un­der­stand­ing of the in­dus­try.

“Learn­ing along­side brew­ing pro­fes­sion­als from around the world chal­lenged me to think dif­fer­ent­ly and broad­ened my per­spec­tive on brew­ing. I’m ex­cit­ed to bring these new in­sights back to the Brew­ery and ap­ply them every day to help dri­ve con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment.”

The three brew­ers have since re­turned to their re­spec­tive op­er­a­tions, where the com­pa­ny said they will ap­ply their train­ing to brew­ing process­es and con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment ini­tia­tives.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Leesa Mu­ral­ly-Pan­tin said the achieve­ment re­flect­ed the grad­u­ates’ com­mit­ment to their pro­fes­sion.

“This ac­com­plish­ment re­flects the com­mit­ment, dis­ci­pline and pas­sion these young pro­fes­sion­als have demon­strat­ed through­out their jour­ney. We are in­cred­i­bly proud of what they have achieved and ex­cit­ed about the ex­per­tise they now bring back to our brew­ery. In­vest­ing in our peo­ple is one of the most im­por­tant in­vest­ments we can make, and to­day’s grad­u­ates rep­re­sent the fu­ture of brew­ing ex­cel­lence with­in our com­pa­ny and across the re­gion.”

Carib Brew­ery said it has sup­port­ed in­ter­na­tion­al tech­ni­cal train­ing for its brew­ing teams over many years as part of its work­force de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme.

Bev­er­age sec­tor sup­ply chain di­rec­tor Akash Rag­bir said con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in tech­ni­cal train­ing is im­por­tant to main­tain­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing stan­dards.

“Great beer be­gins with great brew­ers. By in­vest­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised tech­ni­cal train­ing, we are strength­en­ing our brew­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty for the fu­ture while con­tin­u­ous­ly im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty, con­sis­ten­cy and in­no­va­tion that our con­sumers ex­pect. This in­vest­ment is about build­ing ex­per­tise that ben­e­fits not on­ly our busi­ness to­day but the next gen­er­a­tion of brew­ers across the Caribbean.”

The com­pa­ny said de­vel­op­ing tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise re­mains a pri­or­i­ty as man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­tries place greater em­pha­sis on spe­cialised skills and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised stan­dards.