>
SUPPLIER SPOTLIGHT
A New Star is Born New World Luxury Brands, a new division of Turkish multinational tobacco leaf supplier Star Agritech, seeks to restore high quality, pure tobacco products into the global market. > STAFF REPORT
I
ncorporated in Singapore in January 2019, New World Luxury Brands PTE (New World) becomes the latest related diversification move by global player Star Agritech International (SAI). SAI was launched in 2009 to service smalland medium-sized cigarette and cigar manufacturers with tobacco leaf worldwide, and the group now has an enviable presence in the tobacco industry on all five continents with sales and marketing offices as well as production facilities. Its founder and CEO, Dr. Iqbal Lambat, is an industry veteran with over 30 years experience in the sector, having worked for heavy weights Philip Morris, Japan Tobacco International, and in his last corporate assignment with Imperial brands before setting up SAI ten years ago. Over that period, he gained an acute view of the macro and micro changes in the industry, changes such as cigarettes moving from “full flavor” to “milds” and then onto “lights” as manufacturers tampered with blends to accommodate
18 SMOKESHOP February 2019
increasing legislation on lower tar and nicotine delivery as well as blend cost reduction to remain profitable as increas-
ing excise taxes choked manufacturer margins. In that process, the very core element of the industry—the smoker — got short-changed by products that were no longer “pure.” According to Lambat, cigarettes in the 1980s had an excellent tobacco taste and sensory aroma, delivered a good level of nicotine, and lasted for a relatively longer puff count, making each cigarette an experience. In today’s products, the frequent use of tobacco derivatives such as reconstituted tobacco (RECON), dry iced expanded tobacco (DIET), and cut rolled expanded stems (CRES) are all manipulated tobacco by-products which reduce the amount of pure tobacco used to about half of what is in the cigarette stick today. These by-products serve to lower nicotine but are also significantly cheaper than real tobacco, delivering improved product costs for manufacturers. Alas, it also results in an inferior smoking experience: cigarettes that burn faster resulting in a quick smoke with a less than contented smoking experience. Added to this, the recent launch of heat-not-burn (HNB) products such as Philip Morris’s iQOS; British American Tobacco’s Glo; and Japan Tobacco International’s Ploom are further compromises to typical conventional cigarettes and their apparent failure to attract consum-
> New World Luxury Brands was established to bring back a “quality smoke.”
