Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/550307
tobaccoasia 37 Emerging local and global legislation in the Tobacco industry places an increased focus on product identification. We have a complete range of coding and marking technology for printing packs, car tons and master cases to help you become compliant with any emerging legislation. Domino has built up unparalleled exper tise in this market and is the preferred supplier to the world's leading Tobacco manufacturers and Original Equipment Manufacturers. www.domino-printing.com Coding and marking for product identification in 2012, the last year for which figures have been published, Europeans, with their long tradition of cigar smoking, got through about 7.4 billion cigars. But to come back to earth: last year, cigar mar- ket volume in China, including inexpensive ma- chine-made cigars and premium hand-rolled prod- ucts, was, Jin said, just 500 million, up from 326 million in 2012 and 145 million in 2008 – an aver- age annual increase of 23% compared to an annual increase of 3% in the cigarette market during the 2008-2012 period. On the basis of last year's fig- ure and assuming that the 40 million smokers are going to consume one cigar a week come 2015, cigar volume in China looks set to increase at least fourfold between 2013 and 2015. Such a rise in respect of inexpensive products need not cause concern about leaf tobacco sup- plies given that nearly all locally-manufactured ci- gars use mostly domestic tobacco, a little of which is now grown from Havana seed. However, local cigars also use some Indonesian tobacco and del- egations last year to Central and South America have raised the possibility that leaf tobacco could be sourced from there, something, Jin says, that would greatly improve the quality of China's pre- mium cigars. Clearly, if the increase in consumption of pre- mium cigars runs parallel with the increase in con- sumption of cigars overall, and if more quality leaf is gradually introduced into non-premium brands, then a question or two is likely to be raised in rela- tion to supply. The involvement of China's domestic cigar industry with tobacco plantations in Central and South America has been facilitated by Cigar Am- bassador, which, as well as running domestic ci- gar festivals, started a 'Going Out' program. The program saw official delegations from China travel to the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, and it is now also looking at sending representatives to Honduras and Nicaragua. "Locally-manufactured products account for the vast majority of the cigars smoked in China" At present, locally-manufactured products ac- count for the vast majority of the cigars smoked in China, something that is clear from official import quotas, which, for many years, stood at 800,000 annually. This situation is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, although the quota increase to 920,000 in 2012 and to 1,300,000 last year is a clear sign of where the Chinese market is now moving. All of these imports are premium products, which, according to official Chinese statistics, account