Smokers hoarding as global luxury cigar market hit hard by Cuban crisis: Very little inventory

Amid Cuba’s months-long fuel and electricity crisis, one of the island’s most iconic exports is feeling the pinch: cigars.Retailers say the industry is facing one of the worst supply squeeze in history as blackouts, fuel shortages and shipping disruptions make it nearly impossible to produce luxury cigars and get them off the island in the temperature controlled conditions they require.“I’ve been telling clients, ‘Listen, it’s been months since I can get them,’” said Manu Harit, a London-based cigar specialist whose business is almost entirely built on Cuban cigars. Over the last year, he said, orders have been filled at only a fraction of what he requested.“At the beginning of the year I ordered £45,000 [around $60,000] of stock and got £5,000 [around $6,650],” he said … In the last few months they have shipped very little inventory,” Harit added.Consumers, meanwhile, are hoarding whatever they stocked up on over the last few years. “I’ve smoked the Cohiba my whole life and now I can’t get it,” said one American who has long purchased cigars in the UK.

“There’s nothing else like it.”Cuban cigars are incredibly vulnerable because the entire industry is owned and controlled by the country’s communist government.So when national infrastructure breaks down, the cigar industry does too.Habanos S.A., the company that controls global distribution of Cuban cigars around the world, is half-owned by the Cuban state, with the other half held by foreign private interests.“There isn’t an alternative… ” Harit said.

“Every brand is nationalized” — including Cohiba, Trinidad and Montecristo.And the process of making the cigars requires a lot of fuel.“All the farms and plantations are a couple hours outside Havana and you need oil and trucks to reach there,” Harit said.In recent months, Cubans have been largely surviving without electricity, with refrigeration, water pumps, public transportation and even medical tool...