eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB), has licensed Cavendish Lloyd Tobacco to start shisha tobacco production in Zimbabwe.
Shisha is a type of combustible tobacco that has low nicotine content, different from the traditional flue-cured virginia tobacco.
Unlike cigarettes, this type of tobacco is consumed using a device called a hookah or waterpipe.
A hookah or waterpipe is a single- or multi-stemmed instrument for heating or vaporising and then smoking the tobacco.
An individual pulls from a pipe, and then the smoke is passed through a water basin, often glass-based, before inhalation.
Shisha tobacco is cultivated in almost the same way as traditional virginia tobacco with minor differences in agronomy.
It uses staggered low amounts of fertiliser, and it is not topped (apical bud removal) to minimise nicotine amounts in the leaf.
Chemical applications for pest and insect control and growth period are just the same as other tobacco cultivars such as virginia tobacco.
The crop is reaped when the leaves have completely lost all the nitrogen and have fully ripened. It is cured using the same flue-curing barns, temperature and humidity regimes for the Virginia flue-cured tobacco and it takes 4 to 5 days to complete curing.
The cured leaf has to have low nicotine content to protect the smoker from inhaling huge amounts of nicotine since shisha tobacco is about constant smoke inhalation in huge quantities.
Compared to flue-cured tobacco, shisha tobacco is easier to grow. The crop requires less fertiliser than flue-cured tobacco, and it has fewer field operations making it cheaper to produce.
It will be processed locally and there are lucrative markets for the produce across Africa and Europe.
“It presents huge opportunities for Zimbabwean farmers,” said TIMB. “This is in line with the Tobacco Value Chain Transformation strategy which seeks to increase tobacco value addition and beneficiation and grow the tobacco industry into a US $5 billion industry by 2025.
Having started in Manicaland during the 2022/23 seasons, Shisha tobacco has great potential to be cultivated across all regions by several other farmers since the crop has similar agronomic practices and the same curing facilities as virginia can also be used to cure shisha.
Puffing of shisha continues to gain popularity in Zimbabwe but according to World Health Organisation, the substances are more dangerous than conventional cigarettes.
