First Quarter Imports Of Handmade Cigars Show Small Increase To Start 2024
The market for handmade, premium cigars just doesn’t want to stop growing. The first quarter of 2024 was slightly bigger than the first quarter of 2023, according to numbers released this afternoon by the Cigar Association of America. Shipments of handmade cigars to the United States for the quarter were 97 million cigars, up 1.5 percent from the 95.5 million shipped in the first quarter of 2023.
The growth came despite decreases from two of the leading producers, Nicaragua and Honduras, thanks to an impressive gain from the Dominican Republic. Dominican shipments were up by 17.9 percent, to 27.4 million cigars. Nicaraguan shipments were down 2.3 percent, to 54.8 million, while Honduran shipments dropped by 13.2 percent, to 13.8 million cigars. These three cigar countries rolled 99 percent of the handmade cigars shipped to the United States.
The American cigar market—the world’s largest, by far—has been in a boom since 2020. Last year, 467.6 million handmade, premium cigars were shipped to the United States, marking the third year in a row with imports at 400 million or more. The size of the market in terms of units rivals that of the 1990s cigar boom, and dwarfs it in terms of dollar volume, as cigar prices are at record levels.
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