After several years of rapid development, Chinese-style cigarettes (CSC) have shown great vigor and vitality in tobacco markets across China and have become a symbol of China's tobacco industry.
One of the big Chinese tobacco manufacturers dedicating themselves to the development of CSC is Hongyun Group in Yunnan province. As the second largest Chinese tobacco manufacturer, Hongyun Group, which once vowed to become a "representative of CSC", has strengthened he development of Yunyan (Yunnan Tobacco) as a rpresentative CSC brand.
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On January 22, 2008, a new member of Hongyun's Yunyan brand family - the top-grade Chinese-style Yunyan (Soft Gift Impression) - made its debut in the provincial capital city of Kunming. Other high-grade CSC products made in Yunnan, including Honghe Dao and Yuxi Dacheng - priced at around RMB1,000 (US$140) per carton will be introduced soon.
More and more CSC products have won favor from consumers. In 2007, three CSC brands saw their annual output and sales volume top 100 billion cigarettes (2 million cases), and 11 reached 50 billion (1 million cases) to 100 billion cigarettes. One brand generated over RMB30 billion in sales income in 2007, eight brands between RMB20 billion and RMB30 billion and 11 brands between RMB10 billion and RMB20 billion, providing powerful support for the development of the tobacco industry in future.
[b]Flagship brands[/b]
A typical CSC brand received well by consumers is Mount Hongtashan of Hongta Group in Yunnan - the largest Chinese tobacco manufacturer. In 2007, the output and sales volume of Mount Hongtashan reached a record high of over 50 billion cigarettes generating a large impact on the growth and development of CSC brands. This was of landmark significance to the growth and development of the concept of the segment.
Meanwhile, a number of other cigarette brands have matured over recent years, such as Yellow Crane Tower 1916, Yuxi Jingjie, Hibiscus King Blue Diamond, Yellow Crane Tower Lundao, Seven Wolves Gold Classic and Guiyan Shengshi, have become paragons of CSC brands with typical Chinese styles and Chinese characteristics. These products have established the benchmark for all CSC products.
The success of these cigarette products is inseparable from the strengthening of the power of their brands.
China Tobacco of Hubei Industrial Corporation - the tobacco manufacturing sector operator of central China's Hubei province - has made a great deal of progress developing technologies to lower the content of tar and other harmful substances in tobacco, adding extracts of natural herbal aromas to cut tobacco and producing high-quality tobacco strips to which it independently possesses the relevant intellectual property rights. This provides powerful technical support for the endeavor to turn the Yellow Crane Tower into a brand of mild aromatic cigarettes.
Manufacturers of Wuyeshen, Jinsheng and other big cigarette brands have developed a greater variety of technologies for producing CSC that meet the demands of international markets, and have applied such technologies in manufacturing cigarettes of their serial brand families, thus forming a "CSC development and production system" integrating core technologies, independent innovation and a culture of big competitive cigarette brands. While striving to meet the demand of consumers for the development and supply of "reduced-harm" cigarettes, these manufacturers have made efforts to satisfy the spiritual demand of consumers to "have a Chinese lifestyle".
[b]Development concepts[/b]
In efforts to promote the development of CSC brands and strengthen the overall competitiveness of China's tobacco industry, the tobacco industry launched a series of projects in 2007.
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In 2007, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) - the regulator of China's tobacco industry - publicly invited tenders to solve scientific-technological problems for the tobacco industry for the year. As a result, Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute (ZTRI) in east central China's Henan province won the tender to lead the work of fulfilling the "Project of In-Depth Analysis of Styles and Characteristics of CSC". Fifty cigarette products made in China and 20 cigarette products made in other countries, all designated by STMA, were researched. The project's targets were to determine the interrelations between cigarette styles and characteristics on the one hand and the chemical composition on the other and to establish a system to accurately reflect styles of cigarette products, namely identifying stylistic differences between representative cigarette products made in China, and between CSC and American, British and Japanese-style cigarettes.
Judged by the contents and targets of the project, it is perceivable that cigarette patterns with Chinese characteristics will have more distinctive styles and that there will be more stringent standards governing their chemical composition. Meanwhile, different types of cigarettes made in China will have different unique characteristics.
[b]Expert proof[/b]
On August 30, 2007, the key project of Developing Special Leaf Tobacco Cutting Lines for Producing CSC passed muster at a meeting of experts held in Zhengzhou City, Henan province.
This project supports and guarantees processing of cigarettes using unique technologies that play a major role in the development and manufacturing of CSC. The project is studying technology for processing leaf tobacco grown in China as a raw material for producing CSC as well as the characteristics of CSC products.
The development of special cutting lines is intended to promote the development of special production equipment through technological innovation, to upgrade technologies through the development of production equipment, to increase the rate of contribution of technologies and equipment in strengthening the competitiveness of products and to give full play to the potential and value of the raw materials used in the production of CSC, thus performing an important role improving the styles and characteristics as well as the quality of cigarettes.
Meanwhile, in coordination with efforts to fulfill this key project, many tobacco machinery manufacturers have cooperated with tobacco manufacturers in jointly implementing a series of development projects.
On November 12, 2007, Qinhuangdao Tobacco Machinery (QTM) in north China's Hebei province and Changde Cigarette Factory (CCF) of Hunan Provincial China Tobacco Industry Corporation in south central China's Hunan province signed a contract in Beijing to develop a 6,000kg/h leaf cutting line for producing CSC, specifically for producing the Hibiscus King brand cigarettes of CCF. QTM has now started manufacturing the equipment having already completed the design, research and development stages.
[b]Sensory test[/b]
On April 16, 2007, a meeting was held at Shanghai Tobacco Group (STG) to conduct a sensory test of individual aromatic raw materials under the "Technical Study of Core Technologies for Developing Aromatic Substances and Flavorings for Making CSC" project which was jointly undertaken by ZTRI and STG.
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This project is a scientific-technological development project sponsored by STMA. After conducting dozens of tests over more than three years, the panel of experts has succeeded in establishing a system of appraisal of the functions of individual aromatic substances and flavorings that are frequently used in making CSC and also in determining the scope of the threshold value.
Scientific-technological achieve-ments scored under the project will generate important guiding significance to the development of blending formulas and aromatization methods for CSC manufacture.
The year 2007 was a period of intensive development of unique characteristics of CSC and also a period of initial success in the development of CSC products.
In 2008, many Chinese manufacturers, while continuing efforts to promote the development of their existing cigarette brands, will effectively give prominence to Chinese style and characteristics in the development of all cigarette products. Obviously, CSC is now a major symbol of China's tobacco industry and will form a brand new series of cigarette products in international markets alongside American, British and Japanese-style cigarettes. Enditem
