Little known Lankan based firm a big player in Belgian cigar supremacy

A little known Lankan based BoI sister firm of a century old Belgian cigar maker not only feeds the parent’s huge supply chain but also is successful in nurturing a special brand identity in a competitive European segment. “J. Cortès is a collection of 100% selected tobacco. The tobaccos for our J. Cortès brand is made from only the finest Cuban Havana, Brazilian Bahia and Indonesian Java tobaccos,” said Emmanuel Blomme, CEO of United Tobacco Processing (UTP).

UTP is a Sri Lankan BoI firm and the sister firm of Belgium’s J. Cortès Cigars nv. J. Cortès Cigars nv is the second largest manufacturer of cigars in Belgium and the first ranked cigar exporter in Belgium, comprising of almost 50% of total Belgian export of cigars. In France, J. Cortès France has a market share of about 15.1%. The European consumption of cigars averages at six billion sticks per annum. J. Cortès nv has three key brands – J. Cortes, NEOS and Amigos. The Sri Lankan operation feeds into the J. Cortes (100% selected tobacco) brand.

Blomme, who met Rishad Bathiudeen, Minister of Industry and Commerce, at the evening session at which the Minister met the visiting Flanders Belgium trade and investment delegation (led by Jos de Clerqc, the Trade and Investment Commissioner of Flanders Investment and Trade), also praised Bathiudeen on the Government’s incentives for investors and export diversification.

Blomme, whose operations in Colombo source fine Indonesian tobacco, stressed to Bathiudeen: “Pan-GSP countries cooperation can bring great benefits to emerging economies such as Sri Lanka.”

“The overall group strength of J. Cortes is more than two million cigars per day and the group exports to more than 80 countries,” added Blomme, whose unusual promotional video footages made at the Colombo plant show his FTZ workers and even the security guards performing their duty shifts in high speed song and dance moves ‘as part of the complete Cortes family’ and appears to defy the gravitational pull of trade union forces in the FTZ.

The ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified Sri Lankan operations of J. Cortes reach both retails and business to business (B2B) consumer segments. “In addition to the 250 million cigars produced in Sri Lanka destined for Europe, Colombo’s United Tobacco Processing also currently supplies one billion cigar cuts to various cigar manufacturers around the globe. It is this B2B capacity that we are strengthening,” Emmanuel revealed.  

“Our investment here already exceeds 15 million euros. We have decided to double our Sri Lanka output capacity in our B2B segment and recruit at least 1,000 more to our BoI operations. We want to double our cigar-cuts output to two billion per annum,” Emmanuel added.