Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas - Barcelona

Beautifully engraved certificate from the Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas issued in 1985. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of alegorical women and children holding shields. This item is hand signed by the Company’s President and Vice President and is over 19 years old.

Founded in 1881, Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas S.A. - Compania de Filipinas - is one of the oldest leaf tobacco dealers in the world and the first Spanish trading company to be quoted on the stock exchange of both Madrid and Barcelona. CdF was created to cultivate, process, and export Philippine tobacco to the Spanish Tobacco Monopoly. The Philippines was, at that time, still a Spanish colonial possession and the company enjoyed near monopoly control of the Philippine leaf tobacco market.

The Company quickly expanded into non-tobacco activities and enjoyed quite rapid growth until the Spanish-American War of 1898. After the war, CdF, now a foreign subsidiary in United States territory, no longer enjoyed its near monopoly status and had to adjust to a new, competitive environment. For the first 50 years of the century the Company's fortunes rose and fell with the booms and busts of the Philippine economy and the First and Second World Wars. During the 50's, 60's, and 70's, CdF expanded its leaf business beyond the Philippines into Latin-America and Indonesia.

In 1994, CdF was incorporated into the Intabex Holdings Worldwide Group, deeply re-structuring its activities to become the largest dark air-cured tobacco dealer worldwide after the acquisition of the dark air-cured operations of Standard Commercial Tobacco Co. On April 1, 1997, CdF became a part of DIMON Incorporated as the result of the acquisition of Intabex.

Today CdF has almost entirely divested itself of its non-tobacco activities and is completely dedicated to the dark air-cured leaf tobacco business. Currently, CdF has over 35% of the world's dark air-cured market. Dark air-cured tobacco is used primarily as cigar wrappers and filler for cigars and cigarettes.