Taking a Look Around Plasencia’s Cache

These numbers are usually highly confidential. These doors are usually locked. Cigar Journal takes you on a tour through the cache of Plasencia.

Photo: Simon Lundh

Bodega No. 4 at the Plasencia factory in Estelí houses 30 pilones of tobacco, each weighing 2,500 to 3,000 pounds (1,130 to 1,360 kg) – a total of 75,000 to 90,000 pounds (34 to 41 tons). The whole factory embeds 1.2 million pounds (544.3 tons). It takes roughly 52 pounds (23.5 kg) to make 1,000 cigars. Do the math: that’s tobacco for 23 million cigars.

A small room next to Bodega No. 4 stores 465 bales of filler tobacco. At 120 pounds (54 kilos) each, that makes for 55,800 pounds (25.3 tons) of tobacco from 15 different countries, including Colombia, Paraguay, Germany, and Italy.

Photo: Simon Lundh

Plasencia has around 40 different types of seeds in the seed bank. Ten thousand seeds weigh about one gram. Each container holds roughly 10 million seeds. Five seeds are used to nurture one plant. One acre (0.4 hectares) accommodates 14,450 plants, which means a jar of seeds is good for 692 acres (280 hectares).

At Plasencia’s farms in Estelí there are storage rooms with 10,974 quintales of tobacco (1 quintal relates to 100 pounds, or 45 kilos) – roughly one million pounds (450 tons). Another 5 million pounds (2,250 tons) are stored in Ocotal, Nicaragua, and in Honduras.

This article was published in the Cigar Journal Summer Edition 2018. Read more