Forbes confirmed as Angostura CEO

An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed has con­firmed the ap­point­ment of Ian Forbes as Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Group and its sub­sidiaries, with ef­fect from April 1, 2026, for­mal­is­ing a lead­er­ship tran­si­tion that had been in place on an act­ing ba­sis since late last year.

Forbes as­sumed the role in an in­ter­im ca­pac­i­ty on Oc­to­ber 1, 2025, while con­tin­u­ing to per­form his du­ties as Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer. His con­fir­ma­tion sig­nals con­ti­nu­ity at the helm of one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most recog­nised man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port brands, at a time when the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to nav­i­gate a com­pet­i­tive glob­al spir­its mar­ket.

His tenure as COO placed him at the cen­tre of An­gos­tu­ra’s core op­er­a­tions, with over­sight span­ning dis­tillery process­es, bot­tling, en­gi­neer­ing and qual­i­ty as­sur­ance. That port­fo­lio po­si­tioned him to in­flu­ence pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cy, cost man­age­ment and op­er­a­tional strat­e­gy across the Group’s in­te­grat­ed busi­ness mod­el.

Forbes joined An­gos­tu­ra in 2017 in a se­nior op­er­a­tions role at the com­pa­ny’s dis­tillery, be­fore ad­vanc­ing to the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el with­in three years. His pro­gres­sion has been close­ly tied to ef­forts aimed at strength­en­ing pro­duc­tion sys­tems and mod­ernising in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port out­put and main­tain in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Among the ini­tia­tives dur­ing his time at the com­pa­ny was the ad­vance­ment of up­grade works to the waste­water treat­ment plant, a project aligned with im­prov­ing pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty and op­er­a­tional per­for­mance while main­tain­ing com­pli­ance with en­vi­ron­men­tal re­quire­ments.

His aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground com­bines tech­ni­cal and busi­ness train­ing. He holds a Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Food Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, along with un­der­grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tions in Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry. He al­so com­plet­ed a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion with dis­tinc­tion at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, where he re­ceived the top stu­dent award.

His ap­point­ment comes as An­gos­tu­ra con­tin­ues to fo­cus on op­er­a­tional strength and mar­ket po­si­tion­ing.