Jamaica and Heineken have been circling each other for a very long time. In 1884, thirty cases arrived in Kingston — the same year thirty cases arrived in Havana, the same year Gerard Adriaan Heineken was methodically shipping his beer to every port city his export network could reach. Kingston was one of the great Caribbean harbours, a city built on sugar and rum and the trade that moved between Europe and the Americas. Thirty cases of Dutch lager in 1884 was a drop in that ocean. But it was the beginning.
The beginning of the real story came eighty-nine years later. In 1973, Desnoes & Geddes Limited — D&G, the Kingston brewery founded in 1918 by Eugene Desnoes and Thomas Hargreaves Geddes, the company that had created Red Stripe in 1928 — signed a licensing agreement with Heineken N.V. to brew Heineken Lager at their facility on Spanish Town Road. From that year, the green bottle was made in Kingston. Not imported from Amsterdam, not shipped from Saint Lucia — brewed locally, by Jamaicans, in the same plant that made Red Stripe.
D&G had been a remarkable company from the start. Red Stripe — originally a heavy ale before Paul Geddes and Bill Martindale reformulated it as a lager in 1938 — had become one of the Caribbean's most recognised exports. Dragon Stout followed. The brewery had become the sole beer producer of consequence on the island, making Red Stripe, Guinness under licence, Heineken under licence, and Smirnoff Ice under contract from the same facility. When Guinness Brewing Worldwide acquired a 51% controlling stake in 1993 — a transaction reportedly triggered in part by Tom Cruise drinking Red Stripe in The Firm, which caused US sales to spike by more than 50% — D&G became part of what would eventually become Diageo. The Heineken licence continued regardless of who owned the majority.
By 2015, Diageo wanted to simplify its portfolio. Heineken wanted Jamaica. On 21 October 2015, Heineken acquired Diageo's 57.9% stake in D&G for $780.5 million as part of a broader asset swap — Diageo taking Heineken's stake in Guinness Anchor Berhad in Malaysia in exchange. Heineken's ownership went from a prior minority position of approximately 15% to 73.3% overnight. By March 2016, following a mandatory tender offer, Heineken held 95.76% of D&G — effectively full ownership.
The brewery on Spanish Town Road now produces Red Stripe, Dragon Stout, Heineken Lager, and a range of other brands for Jamaica and the Caribbean. In 2022, the Jamaica Gleaner noted that D&G had been brewing Heineken under licence for fifty years. The brewery celebrated with a five-star tour down Heineken Way — a road inside the facility named after the brand it had been making since 1973.
Thirty cases in 1884. Full ownership of the brewery in 2015. Between those two moments, a licensing agreement, a Diageo era, a Tom Cruise film, and fifty years of Heineken brewed in Kingston.
