Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Habanos cigar sales jump 8% in 2013

Dear Aficionados, 

We wrote a short article about jumping cigar sales in 2013. 
Please feel free to read.

Yours sincerely, 

Casa Del Habano Antwerp


There has been a great increase in the demand for exclusive, handmade Cuban cigars. The sales of Cuban cigar distributor Habanos have jumped 8% in 2013, reaching a total sales number of $447m which equals about €325m.

Although China and the Middle East have significantly helped boost the sales, Europe remains the biggest market. The US is the biggest cigar market, however, due to the economic Embargo imposed on communist Cuba in 1960, it is still off-limits for Cuban cigar distributors.

These results were announced at the start of the annual Cuban cigar festival held in Havana which took place from February 26th until March 2nd 2014.

The Spanish-Canadian Joint Venture announced that even in Canada, where the federal government is substantially hiking taxes on cigarettes, chewing tobacco and cigars, there has been an enormous sales surge.
In Belgium, sales have risen with 5% in 2013.

As a result of the ever-increasing tax on tobacco products, the black market is booming business. Out of 1.5million sold longfillers, approximately 500.000 are fake. Habanos aims to always be one step ahead of piracy networks by having a network of official distribution channels. Habanos is opening more and more official new stores by its own name.

Another method of going against piracy is creating exclusive wrappers. Vrijdag Premium Printing from Eindhoven in The Netherlands prints these cigar wrappers and has a very particular way of making them unique. The printers process three different layers with a holographic image inside. Afterwards they add visible and invisible marks. This process approaches the level of complexity of printing paper money.

Despite the growing black market sales, there has been a major increase in regular Habanos sales as well. Commercial vice-president Jorge Maique sees a bright future for the company.

Sources:


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