Cigarettes – from seed to pack

obacco is a plant harvested for its leaves, which are dried, graded and traded. They travel by road and sea to factories around the world where they are conditioned, blended, flavored and cut. Elsewhere, wood pulp from tree plantations becomes the paper and filter material used to make cigarettes.

Farmers, agricultural technicians, tobacco traders, blenders, processors, technologists, freight companies and factory workers all have a role to play in the cigarette production.

Each stage involves care and expertise to deliver the exact quality, taste and flavor that individual brands become recognized for.

Growing and harvesting

Sourcing the right tobacco is the first step in a complex task. JTI has to ensure that tobacco that is selected will create the taste, quality and consistency consumers expect of their preferred brand.

Tobacco is cultivated in about 120 countries and on a seasonal basis. Year after year, JTI leaf specialists have to consistently blend leaf to recreate component or ‘internal standard grades’ for their blends. The company makes selections based on leaf offered by specialist leaf merchants and  also contracts quantities of leaf to be grown by contracted farmers, in producing countries.

The growing season typically lasts five months from the planting-out of the seedlings to the harvesting of naturally ripened tobacco leaf.

Curing

Immediately after harvesting, tobacco is cured to retain the desired physical and chemical characteristics and to remove the natural sap from the leaf so that it can be safely stored before being marketed by the grower and then subsequently processed in specialized leaf processing plants according to the needs of the cigarette manufacturer.

There are three primary methods of curing cigarette tobaccos but all curing focuses on regulating the rate at which moisture is removed from the tobacco.

Flue curing: Virginia tobacco
Tobacco leaves are hung in enclosed, heated spaces, heat-curing the tobacco without exposing it to smoke. The temperature is slowly raised as the leaves dry out over the course of about a week.

Air curing: Burley tobacco
Sticks of leaves or whole tobacco plants are hung in an open, unheated structure and are left to dry under ambient conditions for between four and eight weeks.

Sun curing: Oriental tobacco
Tobacco leaves are strung together and left to dry uncovered in the sun.

Once harvested and cured, tobacco is stored and aged before being bundled into bales and embarking on the next stage of its journey…

Leaf Marketing and Processing

Having grown and cured the crop, the farmer then grades and packs his tobacco into bales according to the plant stalk position from which it was harvested and also by the quality of the leaf in that stalk position. This graded and baled leaf is sold under varying contractual arrangements, depending on the tradition or convention in his country, including under an auction system, where this is still in existence. 

Specialist Leaf Merchants or even cigarette manufacturers, who have purchased this leaf directly from the grower then need to blend, condition, process, redry to a set moisture and packed into standard weight and dimension shipping cases  before it can be containerized and shipped off to be used in cigarette manufacturing.

In the leaf processing plant, in the case of burley or flue cured tobacco, the processing involves ‘threshing’ to remove the stem or midrib in order that the lamina can be satisfactorily handled in the cigarette primary processing factory. Sun cured Oriental leaf does require this threshing since the midribs are thin and pliable enough not to impede the quality of cutfiller in the cigarette making process.

Primary processing

The tobacco then undergoes a series of processes to convert different grades of leaf into blends and cut filler.

The first step is conditioning. This is where tobacco is processed at controlled temperature through large cylinders that humidify it. Tobacco regains its elasticity during this process, which is important to ensure the right texture and tobacco density as the cigarettes are made.

The next step is blending and the application of casing and flavouring, ensuring the proper mix of different types of tobacco to achieve consistent brand quality and flavor.

There are three main tobacco types used in cigarette blends – Virginia, Burley and Oriental. Each of them comes in as many as 60 different grades and as many as 40 different grades of leaf can be included in a cigarette blend. The recipes for blends of JTI brands are well-kept company secrets.

Following blending, in the final stage of primary processing, the tobacco leaf is cut and dried to the correct moisture level and given its top flavoring, to round out the flavors and properties of that particular brand.

The casing and top flavoring of tobacco takes place to complement and balance the taste of tobacco and also protect the quality of the product.

Cigarette making

Cigarette making machines, capable of producing thousands of finished cigarettes each minute, pack the thinly cut strands of tobacco into a continuous cigarette rod, enclosed in paper. This paper is porous and specifically designed to control the rate at which the tobacco burns. There are over 100 different cigarette paper specifications.

At this stage what’s produced is a massive ‘continuous cigarette’ without any filters, which is then cut to length

The fibrous filter is then added and bound to the ‘cigarette rod’ with distinctive-colored tipping paper. Even the tipping paper has very specific characteristics and has over 1,500 individual specifications.

Rows of holes are also laser drilled into the tips of cigarettes to moderate the way the cigarette burns and how the smoke is delivered.

Packaging

Cigarettes are transported by conveyer belt to packer machines where they are separated into feeder channels and inserted into packs.

The packing machine is systematically supplied with the protective inner foil and, outer cardboard packing material, which is printed with images and text that reflect both the brand identity and information relating to contents, local legal requirements, health warnings, tax and duty.

The foil is wrapped around the grouped cigarettes followed by the cardboard packaging, and then finally the cellophane outer wrapper is added.