Oettinger Davidoff Names Head of Global Production

David Savona
Posted: March 22, 2012

Changes continue at Davidoff. Yesterday tobacco industry veteran Javier Plantada was named senior vice president of global production at Oettinger Davidoff Group. His responsibilities will include overseeing the company’s operations in the Dominican Republic, where it makes such cigars as Davidoff and Avo, and Honduras, where it makes Camacho.

Davidoff said Hendrik Kelner, the longtime maker of Davidoff and Avo cigars in the Dominican Republic, and his team in the Dominican Republic would report to Plantada “on the day-to-day operations,” of the company’s Dominican cigar production, while Kelner himself will report directly to Davidoff president and chief executive officer Hans-Kristian Hoejsgaard.

Plantada, a 58-year-old Spaniard, has been around cigars and tobacco for years. He was last stationed in the Philippines, as general manager of Philippine Bobbin Corp., part of Altadis. In the late 1990s, Plantada was in charge of Spain’s Tabacalera S.A. cigar factories in Central America, which were later merged into Altadis S.A. when Tabacalera merged with France’s SEITA.

“This new role was early on identified as a critical addition to the senior management team,” said Hoejsgaard. He called Plantada “uniquely qualified” for the position.

Plantada credited a visit to the old Tabadom factory in the Dominican Republic two decades ago that sparked him to enter the cigar business. “I am excited to join the Oettinger Davidoff Group with its great portfolio of premium cigars,” he said. “It was a visit to the old Davidoff factory in Dominican Republic that shifted my professional life into tobacco some 20 years ago and it is now an honor to be able to contribute in developing the synergies between the operations in Honduras and the Dominican Republic.”

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