First Quarter 2023 Cigar Imports Decline
Shipments of premium, handmade cigars grew for the past three years. Now, the first data for the year 2023 has come in, and the numbers have decreased. Shipments of handmade cigars for the first quarter of 2023 are down 8.8 percent when compared to the same period in 2022, according to data provided by the Cigar Association of America. Through March, 95.5 million premium cigars were shipped to the United States, compared to 104.7 for the first three months of 2022.
The three major cigar-producing countries all showed a decrease, but the decline was most severe for shipments from the Dominican Republic, the No. 2 exporter of cigars to the United States. Shipments from the Dominican Republic were down 17.1 percent, to 23.3 million handmade cigars. Shipments from Honduras, the third largest exporter, were down 10.7 percent in the first quarter, to 15.9 million cigars. Nicaragua, the leading cigar producer, had a 4.2 percent decline, shipping 56.1 million cigars.
Nicaragua accounted for 58.7 percent of first-quarter shipments, the Dominican Republic shipped 24.4 percent and Honduras shipped 16.6 percent. The trio accounts for 99.7 percent of the handmade cigars shipped to the United States.
Digging deeper, the first quarter report was impacted by an abnormally busy March 2022, which was the busiest March by far in at least eight years. There were 47.6 million premium cigars shipped in March 2022, compared to 36.4 million in March 2021, and 37.8 million in March 2023.
Even if this is the first sign of a slowdown, the decrease is not unexpected. Handmade cigar imports have been growing continuously for the past three years, and grew at impressive rates throughout the pandemic as seasoned cigar lovers smoked more and new cigar lovers entered the market, a time dubbed the “new cigar boom.”
The year 2021 was one of the best ever recorded in the modern-day cigar industry, with premium, handmade imports soaring 25.3 percent over 2020 numbers, to 456 million cigars, a number not seen since 1997. Imports grew by 2.3 percent in 2022, to 464.5 million cigars.
It wasn’t long ago when 300 million imported cigars was the barometer for a good year in the cigar business. With only one quarter recorded for 2023 so far, there’s a long way to go before we know what kind of year this will be.
