The story of Flor the Cop\u00e1n in northern Honduras officially starts in 1975, when members of Tabacos Hondure\u00f1os, a tabacco growing company that was founded about a decade earlier, got together and formed a company that would produce cigars. The story of tobacco in the area, however, starts much earlier than that, long before Danl\u00ed became the most important tobacco region in the country. \u201cTobacco wasn\u2019t big here until the Eighties and Nineties, when the Cubans and Nicaraguans came over because of the political situations in their countries,\u201d says the general manager of Flor de Cop\u00e1n, Jorge Portillo. \u201cSanta Rosa de Cop\u00e1n was founded on tobacco in the middle of the 1800s. That\u2019s when they started growing tobacco here.\u201d As there are still people outside the city making these local-style cigars, the area of Cop\u00e1n is considered the first of the tobacco industry in Honduras. There\u2019s even an annual city cigar festival. \u201cIn August every year for the last 14 years, we have crowned a Queen of Tobacco. And we organize nice things related to tobacco,\u201d explains Portillo. So the tradition is strong and, to this the day, Flor de Cop\u00e1n is one of the biggest employers in the city.\u2028 \u201cWe always tell our employees that we need to maintain our level of quality to produce the same volume, since the factory is an important part of the city\u2019s economy. Today we have about 650 employees. Each harvest, we also hire about 60 to 70 people and we\u2019re the only factory that still exists in the area since the Seventies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The factory opened one year after the company was formed, producing cigars for various clients. It started off with 30 couples of bunchers and rollers and made 5,000 cigars daily for clients in the United States. In 1980, Flor de Cop\u00e1n garnered its first big customer and started to increase production for the European market. At the end of the Eighties, sales decreased due to an unstable market in America, from which the main orders had come, but \u201c Thanks to the European market, which experienced a big boom, things turned around and, in 1994, during the boom, we started increasing our production again,\u201d says Portillo. Three years later, Flor de Cop\u00e1n was bought by Consolidated, which later merged with Seita. By that time, the decision had already been made to move to what is the current factory, which was much bigger. Production increased from 30,000 cigars per day to 65,000, and there was no change to the company politics. The year 2004 was the next important one in Flor de Cop\u00e1n history. It was when Seita, or Altadis U.S.A., as it was now known after merging with Tabacalera S.A., was sold to Imperial Tobacco [Imperial Brands since 2016]. \u201cAgain, we kept the whole team and didn\u2019t change our philosophy, and that\u2019s something we\u2019re very proud of,\u201d explains Portillo. \u201c The factory is still run by Hondurans.\u201d It is said that cigars originally come from Honduras. The Cop\u00e1n district of Honduras is a mountainous area and the combination of warm days, cool nights and dry air makes it perfect for tobacco growing. At the archaeological site of Cop\u00e1n, near the factory and tobacco fields, is where the alleged oldest cigar in history was found: a twist of tobacco left half-smoked by a Mayan priest, about 1,500 years ago. As a factory, Flor de Cop\u00e1n also gives name to their most well-known Honduran brand in Europe, the Flor de Cop\u00e1n brand, awarded the Cigar Trophy for Best Brand Honduras in 2008. FdC Linea Puros Robusto won the Cigar Trophy 2010 for Best Cigar Honduras. It is a brand that has had a long Honduran tradition since 1795. Dedicated and experienced manufacturers keep careful watch over all the details of its hand-made process to ensure its high quality. Flor de Cop\u00e1n\u2019s cigar essence comes from a blend of Honduran long fillers harvested in the most exclusive tobacco regions of the country.\u2028Together with Tabacalera de Garc\u00eda in the Dominican Republic, Flor de Cop\u00e1n also produces cigars for the Imperial brands once made famous by Cuba, like H. Upmann, San Luis Rey, Gispert and Romeo y Julieta, for the US market. \u201cHonduran cigars have a different character to Dominican ones. Being both excellent cigars, Honduran cigars are known to be very sweet and aromatic,\u201d says Elmer Suarez, tobacco and new products development manager. Now the company is looking forward to celebrating the factory\u2019s 40th anniversary. \u201cWe\u2019re going to make a special edition anniversary cigar that will probably come out in December,\u201d discloses Portillo. \u201cHonduran tobacco and our people are the best assets we have. We\u2019ll keep focusing on creating more jobs and opportunities for our people and surprising our customers with the best Honduras tobacco products.\u201d This article was published in the Cigar Journal Autumn Edition 2016. Read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The factory Flor de Cop\u00e1n has history and importace. In the oldest tobacco growing region in Honduras, it is the only cigar factory and one of the biggest employers in the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":14398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[177,53,49,2808,4155,68,692,44],"tags":[3103,1647],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}