FEATURE
Du Boulay’s Bottling Company: 44 years in the making
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modest production plant, a single truck and 12 members of staff – that’s how Du Boulay’s Bottling Company Ltd. (DBC) began on March 1, 1972. It was four brothers (Dunstan, Frank, Leslie and Tony) who came up with the idea a year earlier, in 1970, to branch out into beverage manufacturing. They had been working with their father, Donald Du Boulay, in his business Du Boulay’s Ice Factory, an ice manufacturing and cold storage operation. Determined to find a way to complement the family business, the brothers saw an opportunity. Dunstan and Tony performed a critical assessment of the marketplace and aggressively began pursuing the acquisition of equipment in order to realise the new vision within the shortest possible time frame. Du Boulay’s Bottling Company opened its doors with the brothers’ own soft drink brand ICY, named after their father’s ice factory. They later added 7 Up to their product offerings. The two other bottling businesses in St. Lucia were subsequently absorbed as DBC began to expand and to build its brand portfolio. Later, the company ended its arrangement with PepsiCo to produce 7 Up, and instead signed with the Coca-Cola BusinessFocus Sept / Oct
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Company, taking on Coca-Cola and Sprite beverages. Forty-four years later, the four brothers – Dunstan, Tony, Leslie and Frank – remain directors of the company and DBC is arguably the leading beverage manufacturing establishment in St. Lucia and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) territories. Servicing practically every segment of the market, from St. Lucia’s smallest street vendors to its largest wholesalers and retailers, DBC holds a strong presence at all supermarkets and has almost total exclusivity in the island’s restaurant, fast food and hospitality sectors. Its lineup of international quality products includes Coca-Cola Classic, Coca-Cola Light, CocaCola Zero, Sprite, Sprite Zero, Minute Maid Juices, Glacéau Vitamin Water, PowerAde Isotonic Beverage, Full Throttle Energy Drink, its flagship range of ICY soda flavours, Crystal Clear Cran-Water and Crystal Clear premium purified bottled water. “Over the years we have established strong business relationships with almost all our major suppliers and vendors, having particularly strong ties with the largest supermarket and hotel chains. We are actually in one particular case shareholders of one of our major suppliers – Rose & Laflamme (B’dos)
Limited,” says one of the four founding brothers and current DBC Managing Director, Dunstan Du Boulay. Located between Manoel Street, Bridge Street and Hospital Road in Castries, DBC is one of five Coca-Cola bottlers in CARICOM and produces Coca-Cola products for St. Lucia, Dominica, Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In addition, DBC produces Fanta soft drinks for Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “DBC boasts one of the most formidable portfolios in the beverage business with internationally renowned products. The uncompromising quality of our products combined with our quality of service are certainly our most defining attributes,” Du Boulay says. The company now operates a fleet of 17 vehicles and has a complement of more than 120 members of staff – a far cry from its modest beginnings of one truck and 12 employees. As any successful business, DBC has of course evolved throughout its four decades in operation, but what has remained consistent during the entire time is the steadfast hold on the initial vision Dunstan, Tony, Leslie and Frank had back in 1970.