Emerging markets look to Zim for tobacco

While demand for Zimbabwean tobacco has dropped “significantly” in traditional markets such as Europe and the United States, there’s growing demand in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil. “While these emerging countries produce their own tobacco, their product is low on f lavour and nicotine. They therefore need the strongly f lavoured Zimbabwean tobacco to blend with their product to manufacture a high-quality end-product such as cigars and cigarettes,” said Dr Andrew Matibiri, CEO of Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Industry Marketing Board. He told FTW that Zimbabwe’s soil and rich, diverse landscape produce tobacco leaves that have a high nicotine content. “China, as the world’s largest tobacco producer, only needs to import a little of our tobacco to blend with their product,” he commented. South Africa is also a major export market for Zimbabwe – importing around 15% of Zimbabwe’s tobacco leaves – to manufacture cigarettes for export as well as re-export the leaves. “We are a landlocked country, so if we had to manufacture valueadded end products such as cigarettes, we would not be able to compete on the global stage as the price of transportation would shoot up the prices of our product. South Africa has the edge on us with that so we focus on farming a good raw product,” Matibiri pointed out. The biggest challenge for Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry is to produce a high quality tobacco leaf that will fetch the highest price per kilogram on the market, he said. “There are clear indications that the small-scale farmers, supported by contracting arrangements, are increasingly producing high quality products and reaping the benefits of a good export crop,” said Matibiri, especially as production is steadily increasing and the farmers can now afford more labour and can invest in machinery. “The outlook for growth in this sector looks good and we are confident of attaining the high production figures of 2014 of over 216 million kilograms,” he said, adding that the price per kilogram was expected to exceed last year’s price by at least one US dollar. In the early 2000s, tobacco production fell to record lows of 48 million kilograms. However, over a decade later, production is almost up to where it was in the production boom time of the 1990s. For the coming season – the cured product is expected to go on auction by the middle of next month – over 75 000 farmers have registered to sell, said Matibiri. INSERT & CAPTION They need the strongly flavoured Zimbabwean tobacco to manufacture a high-quality end product. – Andrew Matibiri CAPTION Women working the fields on a tobacco farm near Harare. INSERT Zimbabwe's top 5 tobacco importers South Africa China Belgium Hong Kong United Arab Emirates