Carew & Co (Bangladesh) Ltd

Carew & Co. (Bangladesh) Ltd. is the only licensed distillery producing alcohol made from sugar molasses in Bangladesh and is located at Darshana, Chuadanga, Khulna Division, Bangladesh. It is the only distillery in Bangladesh owned by the government of Bangladesh. It is located inside the Darsana Sugar Mills compound and is under the authority of the Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation. It is one of the 15 sugar mills owned by Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation that makes a profit.

Carew & Co. (Bangladesh) Ltd. traces its origins to the distillery established by British businessman John Maxwell in 1803. He built the distillery in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, in British India. The first distillery in the subcontinent The distillery was successful and started making profits for Maxwel. He hired Robert Russell Carew, the spirits specialist. Carew was impressed by the result and bought out the factory with two other investors. Carew hired his younger brother as the manager. His brother died in the Indian Sepoy Mutiny in 1857.

After the mutiny, Carew reopened the distillery with the support of the British Army. The company became a joint-stock company in 1897. He opened branches in Asansol, Katni, and Darsana (East Bengal, which became East Pakistan in 1947). The equipment in the factories was made in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1971, East Pakistan became an independent Bangladesh after the Bangladesh Liberation War. The government of Bangladesh nationalized the distillery at Darsana in 1973 which became Carew & Co. (Bangladesh) Ltd.

The distillery is a profit-making company for the government, which pays taxes to it as well. It has a 20 feet security wall and a robust security system. It makes two kinds of liquor, domestic ones using indigenous recipes and foreign ones that do not exploit indigenous recipes. It has 200 distribution agents and 13 country liquor distribution agents. It is also the largest producer of ethanol in Bangladesh.