By Jay Amberg.Bloomberg Lifestyles .
Bloomberg.com. Thu, 01 Mar 2001, 1:01pm
EST
Havana, Feb. 28 -- Habanos SA, Cuba's global marketer and distributor for
cigars, expects to produce about 150 million cigars this year, compared with 118
million a year ago, according to Manuel Garcia, a company vice president.
The company said it earned about $180 million on cigar sales last year,
accounting for about 85 percent of its income.
The remaining 15 percent of income was made through sales of bulk tobacco
and products bearing Cuban cigar logos, including lighters, humidors and other
accessories.
Cuba has attributed last year's production slump to a crippling drought, the
island's worst in a decade, and expects this year's tobacco crop to be much
improved.
The harvest, which began early this month and will end the second week of
March, has by most accounts gone well, especially at Vegas Robaina, a major farm
in Macizo de San Luis (Vuelta Abajo) in Cuba's most western province of Pinar
del Rio.
``The crop is good this year,'' said Don Alejandro Robaina, Cuba's legendary
tobacco farmer and global spokesman for Cuban cigars. ``We have large leaves
that are disease free.''
Reports from Cuba earlier this month alleged the current tobacco crop was
suffering from blue mold, an airborne fungus that infects entire crops and
renders the leaves useless for rolling cigars.
The reports were in doubt because blue mold thrives in wet conditions,
something Cuba's seen little of in the past 14 months.
According to Garcia, leading last year's production of hand rolled cigars
was the Montecristo brand with 86 million cigars manufactured, followed by Romeo
y Julieta at 14.4 million cigars and Partagas at about 12 million.
Some visitors in Havana for Cuba's recently concluded Third International
Habano Festival questioned whether the cigar production targeted for this year
can be reached while maintaining the quality of the product.
In recent years, Habanos has been criticized by consumers for its zealous
production goals and eroding quality control.
Some consumers said this year's slump in production was actually good for
the Cuban cigar industry because the drop in manufacturing has caused quality to
improve.
In October, the Spanish-Franco group Altadis completed an agreement to pay
$476 million (539 million euros) for a 50 percent share of Habanos.
Some cigar industry executives outside Cuba said Habanos could be feeling
internal pressure to boost 2001-03 cigar production because to date, Altadis has
paid the Cuban government $438.9 million, with the remaining $38.1 million
dependent on Habanos reaching unspecified earnings targets in the next three
years.
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