As any regular Absolute Cigars customer knows, we’ve been shipping cigars worldwide here for close to 25 years, including to the beautiful city/state of Singapore where we’re proud to have so many cigar fans trust us with their international cigar purchases through our Singapore cigar delivery service.
In 2020 new packaging and Singapore specific labeling regulations were passed in Singapore. We get a lot of questions on this, so let’s take a look at how all this works and how have these regulations affected shipping cigars to Singapore.
The good news is, yes, we’re still shipping cigars to Singapore every day. Of course, Singaporeans importing cigars, for personal use is perfectly legal.
The slightly unfortunate aspect is that these new regulations require those cigars to have their bands removed and all other graphic packaging (boxes and any labels) removed, and require them have labels added: both a Singapore specific health warning label as well as an age restriction label. Cigars not re-packaged this way are not admitted into the country and are returned or even confiscated upon arrival. Not good. But, not a problem when you order from us.
So, back to the good news – here at Absolute Cigars we do the work to prepare your cigars exactly according to the Singapore regulations and we re-package them as required. We do label them with the required labels, and we ship them in full adherence to your regulations.
So, how do we re-package them for Singapore cigar delivery? After removing all the bands and packaging, we re-package in sealed ziplock bags, containing a Boveda HumiPack and we add all the required Singapore health and age restriction labels. On orders where multiple different cigars are ordered, we manually identify each bag so you know what’s in each ziplock. This is in compliance with the regulations as detailed in the following Singapore Government Publications:
The Standardised Packaging Guidance Booklet, Section 11, Retail packaging for Other Tobacco Products (Cigars).
We comply with the removal of cigars bands based on guidance in The Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) (Appearance, Packaging and Labelling) Regulations 2019 (September 30, 2022 Update) Section 30 (5a) regarding removal of non-compliant cigar bands.
Our use of ziplock bags as a protective wrapper is in compliance based on section 31a and 31b of The Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) (Appearance, Packaging and Labelling) Regulations 2019 (September 30, 2022 Update).
The band removal process can be a slow and tedious task for our staff. It does take time as we must be extremely careful removing bands. Some do not come off easily and cigar wrappers can get damaged if care is not taken. We do this for every cigar in your order, and we do not charge any service fee for our time on this.
Can the cigar wrappers get damaged from removing the bands? Cigar bands are affixed to cigars with just the slightest amount of all-natural vegetable glue. Most come off easily with no problem and zero damage to the cigar. However some manufacturers or individual cigar rollers may use more glue than others, and from time to time we do see minor wrapper damage to a given cigar. Of course we do our best to minimize this, but yes, you may see the the odd cigar with some minor wrapper flaw.
We then heavily wrap the ziplock bags, so as to minimize or eliminate loose cigars moving around during shipment. To be honest, generally we get no complaints about the condition of re-packaged cigars shipped to Singapore.
It’s important to note that the re-packaging process has no effect on possible customs tax & duty that may be applied upon landing in Singapore, and indeed some customers are asked by Singapore Customs to take care of that payment prior to release of their package. Our re-packaging and shipping process does not affect the taxable nature of the product at all. So, as with all countries, we advise Singapore customers to be aware of the potential for tax.
We have had customers ask us to ship their cigar bands separately. Unfortunately we cannot do this.
How much is shipping to Singapore? This simply depends on the size of your order and the products included. Shipping is calculated live when you put items in your cart, and you’re able to see your shipping charge before you need to click final checkout. We charge as little as possible, as it is never our intention to make any money on shipping.
In terms of ship time from our offices to Singapore, this is typically 7-10 days. We do not offer any specific ship time guarantee as, with any international shipment, the customs clearance time may vary depending on staffing or any back-ups in clearing packages. That plus our reliance on US postal and Singapore postal delivery times, we simply advise about 7-10 days. As always, we advise customers to be patient with international shipping and to rest assured that we get packages out as quickly as we possibly can.
Do other merchants ship to Singapore? No doubt you can find another merchant that will ship there, but as of writing we are not aware of other retailers that will take the time and effort to meet the Singapore packaging requirement and do this at no additional cost to the customer.
What cigars are available for shipment to Singapore? Everything you see on our site. Here’s just a small sampling of cigar brands available to you with our Singapore cigar delivery service, these and many, many more!:
Thanks for taking the time to learn about our Singapore cigar service. We appreciate our loyal customers in Singapore, many who have been with us for decades! Thank you and, as always, please feel free to reach out to us if you need any assistance with products or have questions about cigars delivered to Singapore by AbsoluteCigars.com.
