Do we like them?

Do we like Bacardi?

Family-owned spirits maker (Bacardí rum, Grey Goose, Bombay Sapphire, Patrón), headquartered in Bermuda.

Our score: 5 out of 10. A big family-run drinks firm with a decent emissions record at its main distillery, but the search results show a few old fines and legal fights. Our info is thin, so we're only at mixed.

Bacardi is a private, family-run spirits company. One report says about 600 shareholders own it, and 98% of them are Bacardi family members. The chairman is Facundo L. Bacardi, a fifth-generation family member. Mahesh Madhavan was named CEO in 2017, and our results didn't confirm who holds the job now.

On the green side, in 2023 Bacardi opened a combined heat and power system at its Cataño distillery in Puerto Rico. It says this will roughly halve greenhouse gas emissions for its flagship rum. The catch is that nearly all the figures come from Bacardi's own press releases, and we found no independent check.

The legal record is mixed. In 2008 the EPA said the Cataño plant broke its Clean Water Act discharge limits. Bacardi paid a $550,000 penalty under a consent decree and agreed to donate and preserve land valued at $1 million. A 2006 price-fixing penalty of $153,333 is also on record for Bacardi USA.

More recently, Bacardi lost a commercial dispute with former partner Brown-Forman over cost-sharing. A tribunal ruled in 2021 that Bacardi owed about £51.5 million plus interest. We'd call it a business fight, not a harm. The overall score is middling because the evidence is old or comes from the company itself.