Bacardi has set up a $3m fund to help bar owners and bartenders make ends meet during the global coronavirus lockdown.

The British pub and bar industry will be lost within days if the government does not take swift action to prop it up, leading operators have warned.

Producers throughout the Cognac region have major concerns that early budbreak, caused by an unprecedented warm spell in early April, could result in severe crop damage if night-time temperatures fall to freezing in the next few weeks.