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CIGAR IMPORTS FINISH 2007 AT 335 MILLION! |
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Page 1 of 2  Plus: Joya de Nicaragua close to inking new distributor
Los Angeles, March 13 – The peak year of the Cigar Boom came in 1997, when imports of premium cigars jumped as astounding 71.6 percent to a still-frightening total of 417.8 million. The following year, the figures were reduced, but a still sensational 334.6 million cigars were imported in what is generally considered the last year of the fad.
But that 1998 figure has been surpassed. The final, full-year import figures for 2007 from the Cigar Association of America showed that, despite the smoking bans and higher taxes in many locations, imports of premium cigars increased 7.8 percent to the second-highest total on record: 335,167,000 cigars.
The record total came as imports for December of 2007 rose by 16.5 percent over 2006 and brought the year to a noteworthy close, surpassing a Boom-time total that many industry executives thought would not be challenged for a long time. Now only the white-hot 1997 total is larger. Of note:
As usual, the parade of cigar-making nations was led by the Dominican Republic. Exports of premium cigars to the U.S. rose 3.8 percent over 2006 to a total of 177.7 million, fifth-best in the country’s history. Combined with exports of 408.7 million machine-made cigars and the Dominican continued its reign as the world’s largest maker of cigars at 586.3 million units. And that total doesn’t count an additional 264,000 little cigars.
Honduras retained, at least for one more year, the runner-up spot with 84.6 million cigars exported to the U.S., up 4.7 percent from 2006. A total of 21.3 million machine-made cigars was also produced in Honduras and exported to the U.S. for a countrywide total of 105.9 million, the country other than the Dominican with more than 100 million cigars exported to the U.S.
The hard-charger on the American market is Nicaragua, which saw its fourth straight year of increased cigar exports to the U.S. The 2007 total reached 69.2 million, up by a substantial 22.7 percent over 2006 and more than double the 2003 figure of just 33.0 million.
Taken together, the output from just these three countries total 331.1 million cigars or 98.8 percent of all U.S. premium imports. Other countries which registered significant import totals include the Bahamas (1.5 million), Mexico (1.4 million) and the Phillippines (676,000).
American imports also include machine-made cigars, of course and some 554.2 million machine-made cigars came in during 2007, although there are questions about 63 million of these cigars which might have been mis-classified. Still, the American cigar market – by far the world’s largest – comprised 889.4 million large cigars and another 311.2 million small cigars for a total of just more than 1.2 billion cigars of all kinds. That’s a lot of cigars and is up 11.9 percent over the 2006 totals.
Can the trend continue? Will smoking bans, possible FDA regulation and taxes reduce the total? Only time will tell, but as Prohibition proved in the 1920s, Americans have their own ideas about what items to consume, regardless of the insistence of a few that they do not.
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