Report: January-April 2022 Premium Cigar Imports Beating Last Year

Despite a slowdown at the end of last year, premium cigar imports through the first four months of 2022 were stronger than the same four-month period in 2021.

According to a new report from the Cigar Association of America (CAA), an industry trade group, an estimated 139.49 million premium cigars were imported to the U.S. between Jan. 1-April 30, 2022, an increase of 5.3 percent compared to 2021.

The growth is largely fueled by Nicaragua, which remains the dominant exporter of premium cigars to the U.S.:

• Dominican Republic — 38.833 million (+4.12 percent)
• Honduras — 23.345 million (-6.39 percent)
• Nicaragua — 76.829 million (+10.29 percent)

This is a bit surprising for two reasons. First, the U.S. imported 456.3 million premium cigars to the U.S., the largest number on record according to CAA. Second, that record-setting year came despite some trail-off in Q4 2021 compared to Q4 2020.

CAA calculates these numbers based on both the import numbers provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Customs Services and information from cigar companies themselves. The trade group’s numbers are not exact because of reporting differences; it estimates how many “large cigars” were actually “premium cigars.” The differences between the two are that there are some machine-made cigars that meet the U.S. definition of a “large cigar,” though those cigars would not be considered premium cigars by most people.