Hansen Rum Company LTD.

History

Hansen GmbH of Flensburg chose the southern Netherlands Antilles island of Aruba off the coast of Venezuela for their distilling operation. Here, to start with, they had half shares in a rum distillery with Industrias Pampero CA of Caracas, Venezuela's leading rum distillers, who were in charge of the technical operation. No sugar cane was grown on Aruba any more than on Sint Maarten, and all molasses had to be imported from other West Indian Islands. Later Hansen operated the Aruba distillery by themselves and took the entire output of neutral rum, shipping it in specially built spirit carriers with stainless steel holds across the Atlantic and North Sea to Hamburg. Here they pumped it out of the ships and into land-leased tanks to await further transport by road tankers to Flensburg for diluting and blending with rum distillate imported from elsewhere.

The Hansen rum distillery on Aruba is on the coast hard by the industrial port of Barcadera where the tank ships come alongside to be loaded direct from the distillery by means of a stainless steel pipeline.