From CAO International:

“CAO, one of the world’s foremost premium cigar manufacturers, received the prestigious Gold Award for excellence in design and printing for its CAO Italia cigar band at the 26th Annual European Sappi Awards in May.

“Held at the majestic Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, a former Byzantine church dating back to the 6th century, the Sappi Awards recognize excellence in packaging and design. A total of 2,609 entries from 35 countries made the 2005 awards the most hotly-contested ever. Some 350 distinguished guests attended the gala awards presentation in the Haghia Eirene inside the Topkapi Palace.

“We are very proud of this recognition,” commented CAO Vice President, Tim Ozgener. “We devote a great deal of time and energy into developing our cigar blends, and we strongly believe that they should be adorned accordingly by only the finest bands and boxes.”

“CAO Italia was recently awarded the distinguished honor of being among “The Best of the Best” Cigars of 2005, according to Robb Report, the magazine dedicated to the luxury lifestyle.”

From Rich Perelman at CigarCyclopedia:

Statistics are much more an art than a science. If you’re a sports fan, you know what I mean. You can use statistics to prove just about anything, but you rarely find someone who will inform you when the numbers change afterward.

But that’s what the Cigar Association of America did this week as they completed a revision on the number of imported, premium cigars into the U.S. from 2001 through last year. The results showed a decrease in the number of premiums actually imported into the U.S., thus:

• 2001: now estimated at 249,297,000

• 2002: now estimated at 250,364,000

• 2003: now estimated at 257,665,000

• 2004: now estimated at 282,135,00

The 2004 figure is down from an original estimate of more than 304 million, which would have been the first time since 1998 that imports surpassed 300 million and only the third time ever.

Nevertheless, if we throw out the “fad” years of 1997 (417.8 million) and 1998 (334.6 million), imports have increased each and every year since 1994. Moreover, the 282.1 million figure for 2004 is the third-highest ever.

The changes came from new figures supplied by the three companies which import machine-made cigars from the Dominican Republic, primarily Altadis U.S.A. and General Cigar. Even so, the continuous rise in cigar imports is impressive, as is the restated increase of almost 8% in first-quarter 2005 imports compared to 2004. At that rate, we’ll hit 304 million, just a year later than we first reported!