American Sanctions Have Torn Apart the World’s Largest Premium Cigar Business

[Cigar Surgeon]

https://halfwheel.com/american-sanctions-have-torn-apart-the-worlds-largest-premium-cigar-business/458168/

It's a long one so get comfortable.

Quote

 

In late October, about 80 of America’s most prominent independent cigar retailers gathered at the Casa de Campo resort in the Dominican Republic for the Tobacconists’ Association of America (TAA) Meeting & Convention.

Casa de Campo is in the southeastern part of the island. As someone who has had the privilege of staying there, I can assure you, it is a very nice resort. It was built in the 1970s by Gulf+Western, which once owned the local sugar mill. Today, both the resort and sugar mill are owned by the Fanjul family, led by a pair of Cuban-born brothers. (Earlier this year, the family made headlines for getting the Trump administration to overturn the U.S. government’s ban on its sugar due to alleged human rights violations.)

Just a few minutes from the resort by golf cart—the preferred method of getting around Casa de Campo—their company, Central Romana Corporation, also owns a free-trade zone that houses the world’s largest handmade cigar factory, Tabacalera de García.

While some of America’s richest cigar retailers were hanging out with cigar company executives all week, there was a growing problem at the factory. Some of the Tabacalera de García’s nearly 2,000 employees were being told not to come to work. They weren’t told why, but seemingly overnight, the factory somehow lost its main client.

From its start, Tabacalera de García was purpose-built for a single client. Gulf+Western—the same company that built the resort—bought Consolidated Cigar Co. in the late 1960s, and just a few years later, it opened a Dominican tobacco sorting operation for its new cigar group. After a decade, the company decided to move handmade cigar production from the Canary Islands to the Dominican facility. Since then, the factory has been one of the largest producers of handmade cigars, the vast majority of which are sold in the U.S. as non-Cuban versions of some of Cuba’s most famous cigar brands.

In the 1980s, the combined cigar business was sold to Ron Perelman (the billionaire investor, not the cigar-smoking actor), who took it public, bought it back, sold it to a French cigarette company, which merged it with a Spanish cigarette company, which was then sold to a British cigarette company, which, more recently, sold the handmade cigar businesses to a group of East Asian investors.

Tabacalera de García has existed, almost exclusively, to serve the needs of Altadis U.S.A., the company that was known as Consolidated.

As 2025 comes to a close, Altadis U.S.A. has a new owner, and Tabacalera de García has an ownership-related problem. While the two companies are no longer owned by the same group, they and a long list of other cigar businesses share the same problem: the American government has sanctioned Chen Zhi.

 

Many more pages.

[Çnote]

I honestly forgot this was about cigars.

[MrBirdman]

Wow, what a cluster****.

I already respected Charlie’s work over the years, this takes it to the next level. Incredible work Charlie - it’s a must read for anyone interested in the cigar business right now. 

Thanks for posting John.

[gormag38]

Wow. This thing runs DEEEEP. 

A part of me wants to hope that prices fall back to reality. I know that that is foolish however. This Tumeric company, and presumed Middle Eastern buyers, can probably play this crooked game better than Chen Zhi ever did. 

[ha_banos]

https://www.cigars-connect.com/en/cuban-cigars-chen-zhi-soon-to-be-removed-from-the-shareholding/

Missed this one. Work is under way. At breakneck speed no doubt.