STORY: The fact that they smoke here like crazy is probably a kind of honor. After all, on Monday we were at the opening of the Cigar Festival, a trade fair in Havana. There, the leading Cuban cigar manufacturer Habanos announced that they are slowly getting back on their feet after the effects of the corona pandemic and the devastation of Hurricane Ian. Co-boss Luis Sanchez even spoke of an “extremely bright future”: “If you see how difficult the past year and the circumstances were, we were still able to increase our sales by two percent to $ 545 million with a stable exchange rate. And Of course, looking at the whole product approach, the experience we bring to all cigar lovers, we are sure that we will improve even more this year.” The manufacturer, which secures important foreign exchange for the communist-ruled Caribbean island, says it has a 40 percent share of the global market for premium tobacco and controls up to 80 percent of sales for hand-rolled cigars. Habanos markets its cigars in 140 countries on five continents. More than half of the turnover is generated in Europe, especially in Spain, France and Germany. Incidentally, according to the Federal Statistical Office, sales of cigars and cigarillos in Germany fell last year by 8.9 percent to 2.5 billion units.