Tabacalera Palma
A long-established Dominican factory at Tamboril, run by Jose Arnaldo Blanco, producing its own La Galera brand and a large volume of contract work.
Tabacalera Palma traces its origins to the 1920s and a registration filed in 1936, making it one of the earliest Dominican cigar manufacturers. It operates from the La Palma zone in Tamboril, the town outside Santiago that has the densest concentration of cigar rolling in the country. The company has been led since the early 1980s by Jose Arnaldo Blanco, known throughout the industry as Jochy.
Its own brand, La Galera, is named for the rolling gallery, and sits alongside La Instructora, Rough Rider and Cibao in the house portfolio. The bulk of the plant's work, however, is private label and contract manufacture for other companies, a business that is deliberately low-profile and rarely disclosed by client brands. The plant is among the larger employers in Tamboril, a town whose economy is built almost entirely on cigar rolling.
The company reports roughly four hundred people on site, a majority of them women, with several million handmade cigars produced annually alongside a machine-made operation. Because founding-date accounts differ between the 1925 origin and the 1936 registration, this record is marked reported. Jochy Blanco is also active in Procigar, the Dominican manufacturers' association, and the factory appears on its annual tour programme, which is one of the few ways its work becomes visible to consumers.