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44 tobaccoasia and three-year refining for aroma development. It was reported that CTHIC will establish a national- level, first-rate cigar production base in Yichang City, Hubei Province, with investment in the first phase of the project expected to reach ¥500 mil- lion (US$61 million), and in the second phase ¥1 billion (US$122 million). After construction, the base will be one of the four major cigar produc- tion bases in China. CTAIC – integration of traditions with modernity CTAIC has a long history of cigar production. According to Xia Yongfeng, member of the cigar evaluation board of China National Committee for Evaluation of Tobacco Products and researcher at Mengcheng cigar production department of China Tobacco Anhui, there already existed technology for the hand-rolling of cigars in the Mengcheng region of Anhui more than 100 years ago. As a result of inheritance and continued development for more than 100 years, the unique technology for making Crown cigars was developed, now applied by CTAIC in its cigar operation. "In the 1990s, we began to contact the world's advanced cigar manufacturers in efforts to exten- sively learn mainstream international rolling tech- nology," Xia Yongfeng said. "It is tenable to say that Crown cigars are an integration of the folk cigar-making technology in China and traditional international technology, and represents the ori- entation of development of Chinese-style hand- rolled cigars." In 1997, Mengcheng Cigar Factory of CTAIC launched technological cooperation with Domini- can Cigar Company. It hired technicians with Do- minican Cigar Company to train more than 100 technicians for Mengcheng Cigar Factory, and co- operated with them in developing and producing Crown whole-leaf rolled cigars, which has in turn contributed to significantly promoting the level of its Chinese-style production technology. On September 6, 2011, CTAIC signed with Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) – the world's largest manufacturer of cigars and pipe tobacco – a framework agreement on strategic cooperation, which was expected to cast profound influence on enhancing the manufacturing capacity of CTAIC, and even on promoting international competitive- ness of cigars manufactured in China. Also, CTAIC has made improvement to the exterior design and the quality of its existing ci- gar products, keeping pace with the times. The company has managed to lead improvement of the image of its cigar brands with the development of high-grade cigar products. It has defined Crown, Vermouth, and Mount Huangshan Pine as its leading cigar brands, and has developed markets with me- dium- and low-grade cigars, realizing a substan- tive leap forward. In particular, Mount Huangshan Pine and Vermouth, respectively, won a gold medal from China Food Expo and the title of honor as a provincial-level high-quality product, while Crown cigars manufactured in joint venture operations between CTAIC and Dominican Cigar Company won a prize for new product development. CTAIC sells to nearly 120 cities across China. The annual sales volume of half-leaf hand-rolled cigars accounts for 70% of the national gross. In 2004, CTAIC, using the brand name Crazy Horse, successfully exported 600,000 half-leaf rolled ci- gars with different flavors to the United States, marking its first entry into that market. As a re- sult of unremitting efforts, CTAIC saw the sales volume of Crown in the January-September period of 2013 rise nearly 45% over the same period of 2012, together with marked increase in value of the brand and with further improvement of its market reputation. CTSIC – creation of "fashion cigars" Shandong is believed to be the "origin of Oriental cigars". In 1903, the first cigar factory in China was established in Yanzhou City. In 1992, a new whole- leaf rolled cigar product of CTSIC was awarded a prize for extraordinary excellence at the France Scientific and Technological Inventions Expo. In 2012, CTSIC established its cigar manufac- turing center. Integrating the functions of cigar products research and development, production, and marketing, the center operates relatively inde- pendently. Since its establishment, the center uses market demand as an orientation, satisfaction of different demands as a target, and with priority given to developing high-grade whole-leaf hand- rolled cigars, medium- and high-grade machine- made cigars, reconstituted tobacco wrapper cigar Slogan of Wangguan of China Tobacco Hubei Industrial Co. Ltd: Wangguan Cigar, crown of cigars.