China: Production Base Gets Bumper Harvest of Leaf Tobacco for Cigar-Making

Source from:  Shifang City 09/24/2004

A tobacco production base operated by Shifang Cigarette Factory in southwest China's Sichuan Province got a bumper harvest of high-quality leaf tobacco particularly grown for making the packaging material of cigars, after three years of technological development. [img border=0 hspace="4" vspace="4" align="left" src=http://www.tobaccochina.com/english/picture/040909lichuan.jpg] In accordance with an instruction of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) to develop high-quality leaf tobacco particularly used for making the packaging material of cigars, Shifang Cigarette Factory established the tobacco production base in Shifang in 2002, a well-known cigar-making region in China, for growing leaf tobacco particularly used for making the packaging material of cigars. Shifang Cigarette Factory has two production lines respectively used for making cigarettes and cigars. It ranks the first in China in terms of the cigar-making technology. For years, Shifang Cigarette Factory was engaged in the production of special cigarettes and cigars reserved for top Chinese leaders including Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and Marshal He Long. Over the recent three years, Shifang Cigarette Factory has been striving to improve the quality of cigars, and its demand for leaf tobacco used for making the packaging material of cigars has kept increasing. In accordance with the STMA instruction and the factory's growing demand for high-quality cigar-making leaf tobacco, the production base grew cigar-making tobacco in more than 100 experimental plots, under five different technological plans, succeeding in developing high-quality leaf tobacco for making the packaging material of cigars. So far this year, the production base has harvested 6,324 kilograms of high-quality leaf tobacco for making the packaging material of cigars, capable of fully meeting the demand of the factory for leaf tobacco producing cigars. Enditem