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February 9, 2010
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CIGAR IMPORTS CONTINUE DOWN Print E-mail
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ImagePlus: Imperial Tobacco reports fiscal-year 2008 results

Los Angeles, November 26 – Almost any smokeshop owner will tell you that cigar sales are down this year and import figures for premium cigars continue to show a significant decline for 2008.

Figures issued by the Cigar Association of America, using U.S. Customs Service data, for the first nine months of 2008 showed total premium cigar imports into the U.S. at 195.67 million units. That’s down 17% from the 2007 total for the same period of 235.74 million, but that figure included an unknown quantity of little cigars and cannot be used for direct comparison. But imports are down.

  • As usual, the difference is the Dominican Republic. For the first nine months of 2008, Dominican cigar imports are down by more than 36% and little cigars cannot be blamed for all of that. Some 80.79 million premium cigars have been imported from the Dominican in the first nine months compared to 126.73 million in 2007. In September alone, Dominican import totals were down by 30%. At the current rate, Dominican imports may end 2008 at their lowest level since 1996.

  • Honduras, the second-largest exporter of premium cigars to the U.S., was up in September over 2007 and is up for the year! American imports of Honduran cigars totaled 9.05 million in September compared to 8.26 million in 2007 and for the first nine months, 62.18 million Honduran cigars came into the U.S., 8.3% ahead of last year’s total of 57.41 million.

  • The no. 3 supplier of premium cigars to the U.S. is Nicaragua, also showing a small increase for the year to date. U.S. imports of Nicaraguan cigars fell slightly in September to 5.71 million, but through September 30, some 50.56 million Nicaraguan cigars had entered the U.S. this year, 3.5% ahead of the 2007 total (at the same date) of $48.88 million.

    Those three countries accounted for 98.9% of all U.S. cigar imports, with small amounts coming in from Mexico (1.09 million), the Philippines (516,000) and the Bahamas (465,000) as well as Costa Rica and Jamaica.

    If one looks at the total cigar import picture, the scenario is quite different: total imports are up!

    For the first nine months of 2008, total cigar imports into the U.S. of premium, machine-made and small cigars jumped to 1.045 billion. That’s 18.0% ahead of the first nine months of 2007. Machine-made large cigar imports have increased by 37.9% to 561.99 million in 2008 and little-cigar imports are up 18.6% to 287.32 million, although there is a question about whether about 126 million machine-made cigars from Colombia are large cigars or little cigars.

    These figures, which do not include the massive machine-made cigar operations in the U.S. from Swisher International, John Middleton or Altadis U.S.A. in Puerto Rico, show the increased popularity of smaller and less expensive cigars, a worrying trend for makers of premium cigars.

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    “A shape designated as "898" usually refers to its packing, in three layers of 8, 9 and 8 cigars.