Flavour is fading from Zimbabwe tobacco

Source from:  By Jan Raath and Antony Sguazzin 07/09/2004

Zimbabwean tobacco, considered by buyers to rival US varieties, might be excluded from blends used by the biggest cigarette makers if the crop declined for a fifth year and quality continued to deteriorate, a growers' group said yesterday. The crop this year would plunge to an estimated 65 million kilograms, a 33-year low, said Rodney Ambrose, the chief executive of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association in Harare. The country harvested a record 237 million kilograms in 2000, when it was the world's second-largest exporter. The decline began in 2001, after President Robert Mugabe began seizing white-owned commercial farms for distribution to Zimbabweans who were deprived of land during white rule, Ambrose said. While the number of small-scale farmers had increased, less of the top-quality "lemon tobacco", which is used to flavour cigarettes, was being grown, he said. "Flavour tobacco is in short supply," he said. "The longer we decline the more we will be taken out of the flavour formula." By Tuesday, 34.2 million kilograms of tobacco had been sold in the first 67 days of the sales season at an average price of $1.996 (R12.50) a kilogram, down from 41.6 million kilograms at an average price of $2.115 a year earlier. On Tuesday, 700 841 kilograms sold in Zimbabwe's three auction floors for an average price of $1.98 a kilogramme. US-based buyers Standard Commercial, Universal and Dimon have traditionally bought the bulk of Zimbabwe's crop to flavour cigarette brands such as Marlboro and Camel. British American Tobacco, the biggest maker of tobacco in Zimbabwe, fired 170 workers in the country because of the dwindling crop, the Financial Gazette reported last week, citing unidentified people at the company's Zimbabwean unit. A company spokesperson did not return calls. The declining quality of Zimbabwe's tobacco crop is reducing the country's share of the European market. China, which in the 1990s bought as much 30 million kilograms of lemon style tobacco from Zimbabwe each year, would buy only 5 million kilograms this year, Ambrose said. And next year's crop would probably fall further. "Nobody wants to start investing if there is a good chance you will be given 48 hours to get off your farm," Ambrose said. "There is no security." The decline in the tobacco crop, once Zimbabwe's biggest source of foreign exchange, has deepened an economic recession that is in its sixth year. Zambia and Malawi have benefited as some farmers relocated there. Zambia last month said it aimed to triple tobacco plantings by 2008. Some Zimbabwean farmers have moved as far as China. "There are about 600 growers just sitting in Harare doing nothing," Ambrose said. "People are just picking the skills from Zimbabwe." Enditem