Company renames Plantation rum after criticism over slavery link | Food & drink industry

A popular Caribbean rum has been rebranded after concerns were raised that its name was associated with slavery.

Maison Ferrand, which markets itself as one of the world’s premier boutique producers of fine spirits, has changed the name of its Plantation rum to Planteray rum.

The original name was criticised in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 for its links to the transatlantic slave trade. The change was promised in June 2020 and the company said trademarking the new name in 120 countries had caused delay.

The announcement was made by the Maison Ferrand owner, Alexandre Gabriel, at a press conference at the West Indies Rum Distillery in Barbados this month.

He said the new name “pays homage to sugar cane, the plant that gives birth to the rum, and the sun’s rays that are essential for sugar cane growth and ripening”.

The announcement did not address the racism complaints made about the original name, and there were no official social media posts about the rebranding.

The move was welcomed by Rachelle Ferron, the head of entertainment at ITV’s Good Morning Britain, who wrote a piece for the Guardian in 2022 in which she cited the brand in a critique of “businesses [that] still feel the need to use ‘plantation’ as a selling point despite its links to historic colonial exploitation”.

Ferron said: “This is a welcome advancement, and I am proud that I was integral to this long-overdue change, but there is still work to do and I would urge any company to remove associations with slavery from their branding. This was my own little protest but that’s how wider change often starts.”

A Maison Ferrand spokesperson said the company would not be commenting further on the rebranding.

Announcing the decision to change the drink’s name in June 2020, Gabriel, the rum’s creator and master blender, said: “We understand the hurtful connotation the word ‘plantation’ can evoke to some people, especially in its association with much graver images and dark realities of the past.

“We look to grow in our understanding of these difficult issues and while we don’t currently have all the details of what our brand name evolution will involve, we want to let everyone know that we are working to make fitting changes.”

In a 2022 interview for the magazine Drinks International, Gabriel said the inspiration for the original name was his childhood in rural France.

He said the word plantation was “a French farming term”and the name was chosen “without any malice and never with any intent to make anyone feel marginalised”.

This is not the first time a rum producer has changed the name of a product because of criticism about an association with slavery. Two years ago, the Danish company 1423 World Class Spirits rebranded its Ron Esclavo rum to Patridom after criticism of the original name, which means slave rum, and the firm’s claim that it was “an homage to the slaves who paid a high price in the history of sugar cane and rum”.

Ferron called on other rum producers to rebrand products linked to slavery. She criticised Diageo for retaining the Captain Morgan brand, named after Sir Henry Morgan, a privateer and plantation owner who owned more than 100 enslaved people.

A Diageo spokesperson said: “Captain Morgan rum was created around 80 years ago and acquired by Diageo in 2001, and there has never been any legal or financial link between the brand and Henry Morgan, who lived in the 17th century.”