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THE Zimbabwean tobacco industry has been more flexible in recent years with farming contracts for shisha tobacco, a variety that has boomed in demand in the last 30 years, but is still cramped for value addition, that is turning leaf into products that are then exported.
Zimbabwe is the fourth largest producer of tobacco in the world, and the only little country among the top six producers so is almost totally largely reliant on exports, unlike China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and the United States who occupy tobacco producer positions one, two, three, five and six, and occupy the population slots one, two, seven, four and three.
So while there are exports out of the rest of the big six, a lot of their tobacco is smoked at home. Zimbabweans smoke under one percent of what their farmers grow, and hence the crop is almost entirely an export crop.
There are hardly any imported cigarettes sold in Zimbabwe, and while there is some imported pipe tobacco and cigars at the luxury end of the market, tobacco is basically one of those industries where growth in value must come from more production and processing before export.
And this is not just expanding production and marketing, but also figuring out ways of breaking into export markets.
Most countries have tight control of imports of tobacco products, control which goes beyond the excise duties that everybody charges on both imported and internally manufactured tobacco products.
There are and were special licencing arrangements in some countries, State monopolies on tobacco in others, and ways of controlling and limiting manufacture of tobacco products.
These non-tariff barriers are still a factor and this is why the Africa Continental Free Trade Area will probably become the most important factor in expanding Zimbabwean exports of tobacco products, rather than just raw leaf.
Among the AfCFTA goals are the removal of non-tariff barriers.
The Zimbabwean tobacco industry tends to have adapted to being a supplier of raw or semi-processed leaf, and Zimbabwe has become a specialist in flue-cured tobaccos.
The world tobacco trade uses a lot of flue-cured leaf; it is the largest variety in terms of volume. But makers of pipe and cigar tobacco use little, their raw material being largely fire-cured, air cured and sun cured.
And many cigarette blends have a modest percentage of sun-cured tobaccos for flavour, although the pure “Turkish” sun-cured cigarettes are not unknown.
Zimbabwe has produced other varieties of leaf, and some of this was for local manufacturing. There used to be half a dozen or so specialist tobacconists who bought suitable leaf from friendly farmers and blended their own pipe tobaccos and even roll-your-own tobaccos.
These have all closed now although at their height they did manage to even export into Zambia and South Africa.
The industry could fairly easily widen its range of raw materials and the leaf varieties it offers manufacturers, as the growth in production of shisha leaf shows.
This is a fairly recent product globally, a specially prepared leaf for the water pipe, or hookah.
In the early 1990s those supplying this market and faced with steadily falling demand for hookahs and the tobacco needed to charge them, then a complex arrangement, did some research.
The result was a demand for the thin, low nicotine tobaccos that can be fermented with molasses and treated and shaped for use in hookahs.
A tradition of several centuries was replaced by a new variety of tobacco. There are likely to be other possibilities and this requires some innovation among the Zimbabwean processors.
One major trend across the smoking world is the build up in roll-your-own cigarettes. Some of this is generated by smokers living in countries with very high taxes wanting a cheaper cigarette, generally possibly when the smoker supplies the paper and filters although the tobacco will still be taxed.
Others like the idea of making their own because they can quite often use a higher quality tobacco, or choose blends and varieties that give different flavours.
The main brands of such rolling tobacco are not tied to the main cigarette global power houses, and so there are opportunities for new entrants, such as a Zimbabwean manufacturer able to create the flavours and qualities demanded and be able to break into export markets.
Pipe smokers now tend to import their tobacco, as odd as that sounds, and any Zimbabwean wanting to smoke a cigar or cigarillo needs to smoke an import, local manufacture having ceased a couple of decades ago.
Again these products need different varieties of tobacco, but we used to grow this and to make products and we should be able to build export markets for these.
Often smokers of these products are more willing to try out something new, so offering more opportunities to a Zimbabwean manufacturer willing to become innovative and able to connect with a merchant ready to find the most suitable varieties for farmers wanting to try something different.
Adding value to our exports of tobacco leaf may well require more than just making more cigarettes.
We may well need to create blends, which will require some input from merchants and farmers, and be ready to reinforce successes.
It also means a change in the business, with our main customers moving from the cigarette companies wanting a flue-cured bulker, to the smokers themselves who want various flavours and other leaf added to that bulk.
This will mean marketing and market research, as well as expanding our manufacturing capacity, and in many ways a new way of looking at the industry.
Online Reporter