Tabacalera de Garcia
The factory at La Romana in the Dominican Republic, generally described as the largest handmade cigar plant in the world and the production base for Altadis brands.
Tabacalera de Garcia sits in the free zone at La Romana on the southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic, well away from the Cibao valley where most of the country's cigar industry is concentrated. It is routinely described as the largest handmade cigar factory in the world, employing thousands of people across rolling, sorting, banding and packing operations on a single site.
The plant is the production base for the non-Cuban Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta and H. Upmann brands, together with VegaFina, Henry Clay and other lines in the same portfolio. Its scale means it operates more like an industrial campus than a traditional tabacalera, with in-house leaf processing and quality control departments and a large machine-made section alongside the handmade floors.
Ownership has followed the corporate history of its brands: the plant passed from Consolidated Cigar through Seita and Altadis to Imperial Brands, and then out of Imperial in the 2020 sale of its premium cigar business. Because published founding dates for the factory are inconsistent, none is recorded here. Its distance from the Cibao means it draws on a different labour market from the Santiago and Tamboril factories, and the free-zone structure shapes how its output is exported.