It is the future of the former Canary Island tobacco company CITA, now in the hands of Japanese capital, and is a logistics-based business on which island families depend in sectors such as the import of cardboard or the raw material that arrives through the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The official inauguration of the new plant of Japan Tobacco International (JTI) in the Tétouan Industrial Park in 2026 is not simply capacity expansion in the Maghreb. As with everything that competes with Tenerife, the official version states that it is to supply the African market. The raw material comes from territories such as Poland. As soon as possible and the phytosanitary regulations permit, the European market will gain weight in exports.
In the Canary Islands, it is managed by Ahmad Ismail. And in Morocco, the person in charge is José Luis Amador. In the Canary Islands, 85 million euros have been invested and 100 million in Morocco in a plant that took only 17 months to build and equip. From Tenerife, 60% of the production is exported. The tax incentives received in the islands through indirect tax exemptions and other aspects of the REF are not enough to overcome what happens in high domestic consumption markets for the manufacturer of Winston or Camel. This February, he was in Las Palmas with the President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, but officially the future of the former CITA was not present in the conversation.
In port circles and among logistics analysts in the Canary Islands, the movement is interpreted as the definitive activation of a logistical and fiscal ‘Plan B’. While institutions in the Canary Islands intensify tax pressure on tobacco operations, the Japanese multinational has responded with a $100 million investment across the Strait, positioning Morocco as its new center of gravity for North and West Africa.
The message sent from Tétouan by José Luis Amador, general director of JTI for the region, has been a lesson in corporate diplomacy laden with subtext for the archipelago. By praising the ‘reliability of Moroccan institutional partners’ and the modernity of their infrastructures under the new Investment Pact, JTI emphasizes the contrast with the regulatory uncertainty that looms over its traditional Canary stronghold. With an initial capacity of 5 billion cigarettes annually — scalable to 10 billion in the medium term — the Tétouan plant is no longer a backup project; it is an operational reality capable of taking on production quotas that, until now, depended on the fiscal stability of the islands.
The resilience of the supply chain, mentioned by Phil Livingston, senior vice president of JTI, points directly to geographical flexibility. The new ‘green factory’ of 18,000 square meters not only meets sustainability standards, but takes advantage of cost benefits and the agility of the Tanger Med platform to serve 12 African markets from Casablanca. The equation is clear: if the Canary Islands continue to stretch the taxation rope, JTI already has the switch turned on in a jurisdiction that offers aggressive tax incentives and a competitive workforce, with a guaranteed 30% female employment and an institutional environment that today Morocco qualifies as ‘truly welcoming.’
What began as an import substitution strategy for the local Moroccan market has morphed, in less than 18 months of construction, into a regional export hub. The ‘renewed confidence’ that JTI management speaks of in Tétouan is, in practice, a warning that capital has no permanent territorial loyalties if surrounding conditions become hostile. The eco-friendly factory of Tétouan Park is today JTI’s lifeline and, potentially, the beginning of the end of an era of tobacco industrial hegemony in the Spanish Atlantic.
