February 26, 2024
HAVANA, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Cuba’s top cigar maker Habanos said on Monday its sales had soared to a record $721 million in 2023, a benchmark the company’s executives attributed to booming demand for its most luxurious, high-end smokes in markets including China.
Habanos co-president Luis Sanchez-Harguindey said revenues jumped 31% over the previous year as the company pushed promotion of cigars like its Trinidad and Cohiba brands, exclusive smokes once reserved as gifts for foreign diplomats on the communist-run island.
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“This is a year of records,” Sanchez-Harguindey told reporters on the sidelines of the company’s annual festival outside the Cuban capital Havana.
Soaring sales came even as Cuban growers struggle to recover from Hurricane Ian in 2022, which flattened infrastructure and ravaged growing areas in a country already suffering its worst economic crisis in decades.
The 2023-2024 growing season, now entering its homestretch, will fall about one-third short of the pre-hurricane planting area, according to Cuban state-run media. It is not expected to return to normal levels for the 2024-2025 season, the local growers’ association said.
Continue reading: By Dave Sherwood