Los Angeles, September 22 – The economy isn’t the best, but cigar import figures show that there is still strong demand for premium cigars in the U.S.

The newest statistics, compiled by the Cigar Association of America from U.S. Customs Service data, showed that 26.76 million premium cigars were imported into the U.S. in July of 2008, down about 13 percent from 2007. However, the 2007 figures also includes an unknown number of little cigars, so the two years are not directly comparable.

Even so, for the first seven months of the year, U.S. premium cigar imports totaled 142.98 million, down a little over 16 percent from 2008. In comparing the pace of imports, after seven months in 2007, some 51.2 percent of all imports for the year had been counted. By that measure, premium cigar imports for 2008 can be projected at 279.36 million, which would be the lowest figure since way back in . . . 2003 and would be the sixth-highest import total on record.

The breakdown of the import report shows:

Overall, there were 821.81 million cigars of all types imported into the U.S. from January to July, a strong 22.8 percent ahead of the same time period in 2007.

It’s worth noting that these strong figures do not include rising production and sales reported at U.S. makers like John Middleton, Inc., now a unit of Altria Corporation, or at machine-made giant Swisher International.

Despite all of the negative attention given to tobacco these days, people are still smoking – and enjoying – cigars in strong numbers nationwide.

Courtesy: CigarEncyclopdia

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