Report: Premium Cigar Imports Remain Strong Through August 2022

The Cigar Association of America (CAA) has released data regarding cigar imports in the U.S. from January-August 2022. The data shows that premium cigar imports continue to outpace the number of cigars imported last year, itself a record year.

According to CAA, a cigar trade group, there were an estimated 307.02 million premium cigars imported between January-August 2022. That’s a growth of 4.3 percent compared to the same period of time in 2021 and it’s nearly the same number of premium cigars the group estimates were imported to the U.S. during the entire 12-month calendar of 2014.

CAA notes that the growth is largely due to Nicaragua, which has imported 13.5 million more premium cigars than the same period in 2021.

• Costa Rica — 759,000 (+31.3 percent)
• Dominican Republic — 84.621 million (-.5 percent)
• Honduras — 54.41 million (-.3 percent)
• Nicaragua — 166.9 million (+8.8 percent)

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.