For 90 years, Tampa’s Oliva Tobacco has supplied cigar industry

TAMPA ― For 90 years, the Oliva Tobacco Co. has been at war with a tiny enemy — the tobacco beetle.

Since being founded in Tampa in 1934, the family business has kept the insect (scientifically knows as Lasioderma serricorne) at bay, first with chemical fumigations and currently with temperature control. Beetles can’t survive the cold.

“The temperature in here is 62 degrees and 65% humidity,” said John Oliva Jr. while standing amid bales and crates of tobacco stacked in the company’s headquarters in the former Garcia & Vega Cigar Factory. “We’ve never had an infestation. We don’t want one, ever.”

Beetles aren’t the only obstacle the company has faced during nine decades of supplying tobacco to cigar companies. They’ve overcome each in the same manner.

“We’ve adapted,” said Oliva Jr., the third generation president of the company.

Company patriarch Angel Oliva moved from Cuba to Tampa in 1925. He worked in a warehouse that stored imported tobacco for Tampa’s cigar industry, then the largest in the world. Angel Oliva ventured out on his own, establishing tobacco importing relationships with farmers in Cuba.

Oliva Tobacco Co. was born.

Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959 threatened the business.

“My grandfather knew that there was going to be an issue with Castro,” Oliva Jr. said. “That’s why he bought 1 million pounds of tobacco from Cuba before the embargo hit. He kept guys in business until he could find another supply.”

The family had tobacco farms in Honduras and the Dominican Republic before selling and buying four farms in Ecuador and three in Nicaragua, where a diversity of seeds grow tobacco plants. This provides a variety of flavors. The company now owns 1,200 acres, chief financial officer Joseph Del Rosal said.

Today, they sell more than two million pounds of tobacco per year, Del Rosal said. Around 300,000 pounds of that is sold domestically.

Their local customers include the J.C. Newman and Arturo Fuente cigar companies. Around the world, it’s “just about everybody,” Oliva Jr. said.

The tobacco is used for cigar wrappers and filler.

“There’s always the debate of whether the filler or the wrapper affects the flavor more,” Oliva Jr. said, adding with a laugh, “I’d give my opinion, but I’d get into trouble. So, I’ll say both are equally important.”

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Tobacco plants grown under shade produce the thinner leaves needed for wrappers, so those come from the cloudy nation of Ecuador, while the regular sunshine of Nicaragua grows the thicker and heavier tobacco needed for filler. The company also grows wrapper leaves under manmade shade in Nicaragua.

All their tobacco leaves are fermented at the company’s Nicaragua plant, with the wrapper process being more meticulous to ensure that the color is consistent and has no blemishes. The leaves that will be sold in the U.S. are then shipped to Tampa.

“The wrappers are what the smoker sees,” Oliva Jr. said. “They have to look nice. You don’t see the filler.”

Chemicals are never used in their operation.

“The only thing that touches our tobacco is water and heat,” Oliva Jr. said.

But a lack of insecticides means those tobacco beetles have opportunity to infest the supply.

“You’ll know when you have them because they make perfect little holes in the tobacco,” Oliva Jr. said. “It looks like the tobacco was shot with birdshot from a shotgun.”

In the company’s founding years, to ensure a customer’s tobacco had no beetles, it was placed in vaults that were fumigated and locked airtight, Oliva Jr. said. “You didn’t want any of that escaping.”

That method is no longer necessary. A cold room is enough.

Domestic customers descend upon the Tampa facility throughout the year to handpick inventory placed in the sampling room, which has a wall of windows.

“We want the natural light,” Oliva Jr. said. “It’s the right way to look at tobacco … We put a lot of care into our tobacco.”

And that, he said, is why the company continues to thrive.

“We’ve managed to get stronger with each generation,” Oliva Jr. said. “That doesn’t always happen.”