Online Reporter
Edgar Vhera
Agriculture Specialist Writer
THE Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) has urged investors to tap into Zimbabwe’s underexploited potential to ramp up cigarette production from the current four billion to 17 billion annually.
Value addition of tobacco has been on the increase, moving from a low of 2 percent in 2021 to the current 10 percent.
In August 2021, the Government crafted the Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Plan (TVCTP) to enable the attainment of a US$5 billion industry by 2025 (this year) through increased tobacco value addition and beneficiation from 2 to 30 percent. This comes as the Government continues to explore ways to grow the country’s tobacco value chain. Presenting the 2024 Mid-term Budget and Economic Review, Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube said: “The tobacco sub-sector performed well, during the first six months of the year.
“To support growth in the sub-sector, the Government is establishing a Tobacco Special Economic Zone (TSEZ) focused on tobacco sales and processing.”
Special economic zones (SEZs) are geographically demarcated and secured areas within which multi-sectoral business investments are conducted under a liberal legislative framework, enjoying certain fiscal and non-fiscal incentives.
The Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (ZIDA) is mandated to establish and regulate SEZs in Zimbabwe. A recent TIMB X post said that in 2024, value addition in Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry rose to 10 percent, adding that the country had the potential to do more.
“Now that we have reached and exceeded 300 million kg of tobacco sold in 2025, it’s time to scale up local cigarette manufacturing. Zimbabwe can produce 17 billion cigarette sticks annually, yet it is only producing four billion currently,” said TIMB.
“That’s a massive opportunity, let’s increase capacity utilisation, attract new manufacturers and ensure more jobs, more exports and more local wealth creation. We call on interested entrepreneurs to
Invest in Zimbabwe’s tobacco value chain through partaking in cigarettes manufacture for export, processing and packing machinery, tobacco packaging materials, Shisha and cut tobacco.”
By Day 87 of the 2025 tobacco marketing season, farmers had sold 338 916 612 kilogrammes of tobacco worth US$1 132 202 949 at an average price of US$3,34 per kilogramme.
TIMB said that there were over 140 000 farmers growing tobacco, 95 percent of whom produce under contract arrangements.
It added that there are also three privately owned tobacco processing plants with the capacity to process over 250 million kilogrammes of tobacco per year.
“There are seven cigarette manufacturers, with three of them manufacturing over 90 percent of annual cigarette volumes. Around four billion sticks of cigarettes are produced annually,” added TIMB.
The country exports over 180 million kilogrammes of tobacco worth over US$900 million annually, with China being the largest importer (30 percent), worth over US$400 million annually.
“United Arab Emirates (UAE) imports around 10 percent of Zimbabwe’s tobacco leaf, worth around US$30 million annually.
“Five percent of total exports is in the form of processed tobacco (cut rag), 75 percent as semi-processed (lamina) and 20 percent as processing by-products (stems),” said TIMB.
Investment in value addition has seen the proportion of tobacco manufactured into cigarettes rising from two percent to around 10 percent.
Statistics from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) show that the amount of tobacco exports accounted for by cigarettes has been gradually increasing from around three percent in 2018 to around seven percent last year.
During a tobacco conference hosted by Zimpapers and its partners last year, Chevron Tobacco Company Executive Director Mr Tapiwa Masedza revealed that Zimbabwe was the leading exporter of raw leaf tobacco in Africa, yet it was not among the top five cigarette exporters, following behind non-tobacco producing countries.
“The top five leading leaf exporters in Africa are Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia, yet none of these countries feature among the top five cigarette exporters on the continent.
“We are now talking of non-leaf producing countries like South Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal and Ivory Coast as the top cigarette exporters from the continent,” he said.
Statistics released recently by Trade Statistics for International Business Development (ITC Trade Map) show that no African country was among the top 30 world exporters of cigarettes containing tobacco in 2023.
The report also revealed that Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia in that decreasing order, were the leading cigarette exporters in Africa.
Zimbabwe came sixth within the African continent and 42 globally in cigarette exports.
“We need to look at what we can do to incubate cigarette production here in Zimbabwe to benefit from high-value product export in terms of regulation and production techniques.
“We also need to look at the reintroduction of burley tobacco production, as much of the highly valued cigarette brands have some burley components,” added Mr Masedza.
Pacific Cigarette trade and marketing manager, Mrs Kudakwashe Chiutsi, said value addition of raw tobacco into cigarettes and auxiliary industry development would have ripple effects of creating and maintaining employment in the tobacco industry, in addition to increased export earnings for the country.
“Cigarette manufacturing and development of ancillary industries can provide hope for job sustenance throughout the whole year.
“Potential is there to upgrade machinery and sustain volumes for cigarette manufacturers,” Mrs Chiutsi said.
Cut Rag Processors (Pvt) Ltd built a new multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art cigarette manufacturing plant, with the latest technology and methodologies.
Cut Rag managing director, Mr Leslie Malunga, said his organisation was spearheading tobacco value addition through cut rag processing and the construction of their cigarette manufacturing plant had been completed.
