Scandinavian Tobacco Group: The Owner of Nine Brands We Carry

Scandinavian Tobacco Group is the single largest owner of brands in our catalogue, and almost nobody buying a Macanudo knows it. STG is a Danish company headquartered in Gentofte and listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen, with around 200 brands across roughly 100 markets and more than ten manufacturing sites. In the United States its premium cigars reach retailers through two sales companies, General Cigar and the Forged Cigar Company, and the split between them changed in February 2026. Our Scandinavian Tobacco Group collection gathers them in one place.

This profile covers the corporate history, the factories, the current portfolio split, and links to every individual brand profile we have published.

1961, 2010 and the Copenhagen listing

The predecessor company, Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni A/S, was formed in 1961 by the merger of three Danish tobacco firms. The transformative moment came in 2010, when it merged with Swedish Match's cigar and pipe tobacco operations to form Scandinavian Tobacco Group A/S. That merger brought General Cigar and Cigars International into the group in a single step. Lane Ltd., Thompson Cigar and Royal Agio were added later.

The company floated on Nasdaq Copenhagen on 10 February 2016, selling 40 percent of its share capital. Its headquarters are at Sandtoften 9 in Gentofte, Denmark. Niels Frederiksen is chief executive, with Marianne Rørslev Bock as chief financial officer and Régis Broersma as chief commercial officer.

The STG brands in our catalogue

Nine brands, one owner, loaded live from our shelves.

Where the cigars are made

STG makes handmade cigars in the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua, and machine rolled cigars in Europe, the Dominican Republic and Indonesia.

The Central American footprint has a specific origin. In 2009 STG acquired two factories, one in Danlí in Honduras and one in Estelí in Nicaragua, from the Oliva and Toraño families, bringing with them around 950 employees and roughly 17 million handmade cigars a year.

To compare STG's three origins directly, our Dominican, Honduran and Nicaraguan collections cut across every brand we carry.

The February 2026 portfolio split

The Forged Cigar Company was created by STG, announced in January 2021 and operational from 1 February 2021, as a second United States sales company alongside General Cigar, with Sean Hardiman as national sales manager and a twelve person team. Its original brands were Dominican Partagas, Dominican La Gloria Cubana, Bolivar Cofradia, Diesel and Chillin' Moose.

On 2 February 2026, under STG's FOCUS2030 plan, five brands changed sides. This is the current allocation, and it reverses what older articles describe:

One note on the date. Trade coverage renders the effective date as 2 February 2026 in one place and 2 February 2025 in another. The announcement was made in January 2026, which points to 2026 as correct, but the discrepancy exists in the published record and we would rather say so.

Note also that STG's own annual report does not use General Cigar or Forged as reporting segments, so these are sales divisions rather than a formal corporate hierarchy.

General Cigar and Forged, in our catalogue

Every STG brand we carry

Nine of the brands on our shelves belong to this one company. Each has its own profile:

• Cohiba, and the Cohiba collection. Note that the United States Cohiba and the Cuban Cohiba are separate brands under separate ownership.
• Macanudo, and the Macanudo collection
• CAO, and the CAO collection
• Punch, and the Punch collection
• Hoyo de Monterrey, and the Hoyo collection
• La Gloria Cubana, and the La Gloria Cubana collection
• Diesel, and the Diesel collection
• Bolivar, and the Bolivar collection
• Partagas, and the Partagas collection
• Alec Bradley, currently between shipments

The two sales companies themselves also have profiles: General Cigar and Forged Cigars.

What we notice first-hand

The most useful thing we can tell you about STG is not corporate at all. It is that common ownership does not mean common character. A Macanudo and a Punch belong to the same company and could not be less alike: one is the mildest widely available premium cigar in America, the other is a Honduran cigar built on strength. Buying by owner tells you nothing.

Where the ownership does matter is availability and consistency. STG brands are the ones we can nearly always get, in nearly every size, tasting the same as last year. For a shop, that reliability is worth a great deal, and for a customer building a rotation it means the cigar you liked in spring is still the same cigar in autumn.

The other practical point is the Cuban name confusion. Cohiba, Bolivar, Hoyo de Monterrey, Punch, Partagas and La Gloria Cubana all exist as two separate brands: a Cuban one owned by Habanos, and a non Cuban one that STG owns and sells legally in the United States. They are not counterfeits of each other. They are two lineages from the same pre revolution names, and the American versions are the only ones that can legally be sold here.

The bottom line

Scandinavian Tobacco Group is the quiet infrastructure behind a large part of the American premium cigar market. Knowing that helps you understand why certain brands are always in stock and always consistent. It should not change what you smoke, because the brands within the group have almost nothing in common with each other.

Start from the individual profiles above, or browse the whole group collection. If you want help narrowing it down, our Cigar Finder is quicker than scrolling.

Keep exploring