The Padron little cigars became world famous only in the early 90s, before that the main audience of the company were Cubans who emigrated to the States. Since 1993, cigars of this brand have been imported to many countries of the world. Padron owns Tabacos Cubanica S.A., which produces all of the brand’s cigars in Nicaragua. Padron employs about three hundred people, and during the harvest period this figure reaches nine hundred. The company produces a little over five million cigars per year. The factory and plantation are owned by the company,
the business is still family owned, the company is headed by the great-grandchildren of Damaso Padron.
The Padron Nicaraguan cigar makers – the Padron dynasty – continued to buy nearby farms in Pinar del Rio. And after some time, the family acquired a factory in the city of Piloto. It is this enterprise of Senor Jose Padron that received the current name Piloto Cigars, known to all gourmets and lovers of Nicaraguan Padron cigars. In 1961, after the nationalization of the Padron family business, Jose moved to Spain, then to New York, and later to Miami.
There he continued the production of the Nicaraguan Padron little cigars, using the
invaluable experience of his ancestors in the tobacco industry. In Miami, Jose Padrón, as a refugee from Cuba, received state benefits – sixty dollars a month. After some time, a friend presented him with a hammer, which still remains a symbol of the beginning of Jose Padron’s work in the difficult cigar business. How did an ordinary instrument become a symbol of a resurgent family business? It’s simple: having received such a useful gift, Jose got a job as a carpenter. This allowed him to accumulate six hundred dollars, which he invested in the production of the Nicaraguan Padron little cigars in the new land …
Every day, Padrón Cigars produces two hundred Padron little cigars, made in the traditional Cuban style with one torsedor. After some time, the factory released a new type of product – Fuma cigars, completely rolled from Connecticut broadleaf tobacco. Due to the twisted end of the cap, they resembled classic Cuban cigars. The process of creating these Nicaraguan cigars is very laborious, since Connecticut broadleaf tobacco needs a rather long fermentation, so only true gourmets can afford such a miracle!