Ghaziabad: Following a series of tweets and messages on social media networking sites regarding taking popular rum brand Old Monk off the shelves, senior management at Mohan Meakin Ltd informed the media on Tuesday that these are rumours and that the figures are misleading.

Speaking on the issue, Mohan Meakin DY General Manager SN Maingi said, “Sales have dropped in a handful of states, mostly in South India, but that doesn’t mean that Old Monk is doing badly. Since Sunday, I have been reading on Facebook and Twitter that we are going to stop producing our most popular brand. Our managing director Hemant Mohan was shocked to hear this. I want to put an end to all these rumours and assure you that this is not true. Old Monk is still India’s favourite rum and it’s not going anywhere”.

He went to say that even if the sales went down, Old Monk would be the last product to take a hit because it is their flagship product. “Old Monk is the pride of Mohan Meakin. Old Monk is doing well, even without support from advertisement. Thousands of people, from breweries in Ghaziabad and Himachal Pradesh to our godowns in Dehradun, are involved in the manufacturing of this product. Why would we ever abandon these people?” he asked and added that if it were indeed doing badly then the company would not go ahead with introducing several variants of the rum.

Launched in 1954, Old Monk was for a long time the largest selling dark rum in the world. It was, for many years, the biggest Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) brand. While Maingi claims the sales of Mohan Meakin’s flagship product have not been affected radically, figures show that the rum has seen a 54% decline in sales between 2010 and 2014.

Earlier this week, there were reports in the media about Mohan Meakin having sold only 3.9 cases of the rum in 2014 and that its sales today are a quarter of what they were in the 1960s. In such a situation, Maingi’s assurance has come as good news for dark rum lovers in India.