A Guyanese brewer’s idea, Barbadian shareholders and a split name.

Banks Beer is brewed in Barbados by Banks (Barbados) Breweries Ltd, and its story starts with a Guyanese businessman. Peter D’Aguiar had created Banks Breweries in Guyana in 1955, English Wikipedia says, citing the history of Banks DIH, the Guyanese company that grew out of it. He then promoted a second brewery under the same name in Barbados. English Wikipedia says the Barbados government had offered tax concessions in the late 1950s to encourage a local brewery, and that the Guyanese company provided about 30 per cent of the start-up capital, with the rest raised by selling shares to people in Barbados; citing the brewery’s own history, it adds that more than 3,000 Barbadians bought more than 1.5 million shares in 1959.

The brewery opened in September 1961 at Wildey, in the parish of St Michael, close to Bridgetown; English Wikipedia gives the date as 7 September. By 1963 it was also making a milk stout and a malt drink, according to English Wikipedia. On its 1998 website the brewery described Banks as a pilsner-type lager made from a blend of Australian and British malts, Barbados water filtered through limestone, Yakima Cluster and Styrian Goldings hops, cane sugar as a brewing adjunct and its own yeast strain, and it called the beer “the Beer of Barbados.”

The partnership with Guyana did not last. The link between the two companies ended in the 1960s and two separate Banks beers developed, Banks Holdings’ chief executive Richard Cozier said at a launch in April 2008, as reported by The Broad Street Journal. English Wikipedia says the Guyanese company sold its stake to Barbados Shipping & Trading, a local conglomerate, but kept the rights to the Banks name outside certain Caribbean islands. Exports began in 1968, with St Vincent and Dominica first, and in 1973 the company acquired the right to use the Banks name across the English-speaking Caribbean, according to English Wikipedia.

A holding company, a takeover contest and a Coca-Cola bottler.

The beer’s owners have changed several times since. In 1991, under Sir Allan Fields, the brewery bought the Barbados Bottling Company and Banks Holdings Limited (BHL) was born as the group’s parent, the company says. BHL says it went on to buy a distribution facility from Barbados Shipping and Trading in 1994 and the formerly government-owned Barbados Dairy Industries in 1997. In 2011, according to BHL, a new brewery opened at Newton in the parish of Christ Church, and that is where Banks is brewed today: Barbados Today reported in November 2025 on a launch held at the company’s plant in the Newton Industrial Estate.

In 2015 BHL became the subject of a takeover contest. The Jamaica Gleaner reported on 27 October 2015 that the Trinidad conglomerate ANSA McAL was competing for control of the group with SLU Beverages, a company controlled by the Brazilian brewer Ambev. Ambev won. Nation News reported on 8 December 2015 that BHL was no longer Barbadian-owned, after a contest of about three months, and quoted BHL’s chairman confirming that Banks DIH of Guyana had sold its BHL shares to Ambev on the Barbados Stock Exchange. Ambev’s 2015 annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission says one of its subsidiaries acquired the majority of BHL’s shares in December 2015, and names Banks and Deputy as BHL’s beers. BHL’s own timeline dates the arrival of Anheuser-Busch InBev, Ambev’s parent, to 2016.

That ownership lasted less than a decade. On 21 January 2025, iWitness News of St Vincent reported that KOSCAB Holdings, a Coca-Cola bottling subsidiary, had agreed to buy St Vincent Brewery and other Caribbean companies from Cervecería Nacional Dominicana and SLU Beverages, which it described as part of AB InBev. Nation News reported on 14 August 2025 that KOSCAB acquired majority ownership of SLU Beverages on 31 July 2025, when Cervecería Nacional Dominicana, an AB InBev subsidiary, transferred its stake; SLU is the majority shareholder of BHL and of St Vincent Brewery. KOSCAB has controlled Banks since July 2025. BHL’s website identifies KOSCAB as Coca-Cola Southern Caribbean and records that it had already bought the Barbados Bottling Company from BHL in 2018. Shafia London, whom BHL appointed its first female country manager in 2021, became general manager of BHL and St Vincent Brewery under the new owner, Nation News reported.

Design and documentation.

The seven beers in this group come from Latin America and the Caribbean: Polar, Cusqueña, Pilsen Callao, Brahma, Medalla, Kalik and Banks. Several have long histories. Pilsen Callao was first brewed in 1863 at a brewery that Federico Bindels founded in the Peruvian port of Callao, Spanish Wikipedia says, and Brahma was first made by a Rio de Janeiro brewery founded in 1888, according to English Wikipedia. Cusqueña goes back to a branch of the Arequipa brewer Günther & Tidow opened in Cusco on 1 October 1908, Spanish Wikipedia says. Cervecería Polar began brewing at Antímano, west of Caracas, on 14 March 1941; Cervecería India, now the Compañía Cervecera de Puerto Rico, was founded in Mayagüez in 1937 by the Valdés Cobián brothers; and Banks (Barbados) Breweries opened at Wildey in September 1961, all according to English Wikipedia. Kalik is the newcomer: English Wikipedia dates the Bahamian lager to 1988.

Their ownership has gone in very different directions. Two are still made by companies based in their home markets: Polar belongs to Empresas Polar, the privately held Venezuelan group whose president is Lorenzo Mendoza, and Medalla Light, which English Wikipedia dates to 1980, is made by the Compañía Cervecera de Puerto Rico, run since 2017 by Grace Marie Valdés. Brahma has been part of Ambev since the company was created in 1999 from the merger of Brahma and Antarctica, and Ambev is now a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, English Wikipedia says. In Peru, Backus and Johnston bought 62 per cent of the Compañía Nacional de Cerveza, the maker of Pilsen Callao, in 1994, and Cervesur, the maker of Cusqueña, joined the Backus group in 2000, Spanish Wikipedia says; Backus was part of SABMiller from 2005 and has belonged to AB InBev since AB InBev’s takeover of SABMiller in 2016, according to English Wikipedia. Kalik is brewed in Nassau by Commonwealth Brewery, which its 2011 financial statements describe as a subsidiary of Heineken; they record that Heineken’s purchase of the shares held by its Bahamian partner took effect on 17 May 2010, and that the company was listed on the Bahamas International Securities Exchange on 24 May 2011. Banks passed from Barbadian ownership to an Ambev subsidiary in December 2015, according to Ambev’s filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and since 31 July 2025 KOSCAB Holdings, a Coca-Cola bottler, has held the majority of SLU Beverages, which controls Banks Holdings, Nation News reported.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands or moved its brewing. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the brewer says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and how its labels, cans and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Red, a run of slogans and a name shared with Guyana.

Banks’s identity is tied to one colour. Launching a commemorative can in November 2025, Janelle Germain, marketing manager of SLU Beverages, told Barbados Today that Banks “is normally synonymous with red.” That limited-edition can, released for Barbados’s Independence celebrations and the We Gatherin’ initiative, departed from the rule on purpose: it was blue, with gold added to signify the national flag, and carried the We Gatherin’ logo and the Broken Trident from the flag, the paper reported. Germain said the project had taken six to seven months.

Slogans have done much of the work. In January 2016 Banks introduced the tagline “LIFE NICE,” to appear on its packaging, advertising and promotional materials, replacing “My Barbados, My Banks,” according to a company announcement published by Nation News on 20 January 2016; the announcement listed “Beer of Barbados” and “Caribbean lager” among earlier taglines used in the region. Charles Walcott, the brewery’s category manager, said the new line reflected the brand’s wider regional appeal.

The name itself was long an obstacle abroad. With no right to use “Banks” outside the Caribbean while the Guyanese company pursued its own exports, Cozier said in 2008, the Barbados brewery had considered renaming the beer “Bajan” for export, but apart from a brief spell in the UK it made no real progress. In 2005 the two companies agreed to buy shares in each other and to export the brand jointly, and it was decided that the beer should be produced in Barbados, The Broad Street Journal reported; the first containers for the US mainland were shipped to New York a few weeks before the April 2008 launch.

For a design guide, Banks shows how a single colour, a run of slogans and a name shared between two countries can carry an island lager through several changes of owner. Compare Carib, the Trinidad lager of the ANSA McAL group that lost the 2015 contest for BHL, and Mount Gay, the Barbados rum. For this guide we use Banks red, flag blue and gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Banks’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.