China's Tobacco Industry Meets on Project of Developing Tobacco Cutting Lines

Source from:  TobaccoChina Online 07/15/2009

The tobacco industry of China held a meeting in central China's Wuhan City on July 8 to hear reports on progress in the fulfillment of a national-level key project to develop eight major tobacco cutting lines for the production of Chinese-style cigarettes, with the attendance of Deputy Director-General Li Keming of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) and leaders of major enterprises involved in the project.

Started on July 29, 2008, the project to develop eight major tobacco cutting lines for the production of Chinese-style cigarettes is the first of nine national-level key development projects operated by the tobacco industry of China for the current period of time. In an address to the meeting, Li Keming fully affirmed the work of developing the eight major tobacco cutting lines so far, and said that the enterprises involved in the project have done a great deal of work in combining the application of technology and techniques with the innovation of equipment and also in combining efforts of technical transformation with the development of brands and characteristics of products, which, he said, has led to remarkable achievements and has given prominence to the characteristics of brands, exquisite processing, intelligent control and equipment innovation. Li emphasized that in a next period of time, the fulfillment of the project should embody what he called "three combinations", "three promotions" and "three breakthroughs". According to Li, "three combinations" refer to the combination of technical transformation and development of new products and specifications with innovation, the combination of technological research and equipment development with innovation, and the combination of improvement of exterior quality of products in tobacco cutting with the improvement of internal quality. Meanwhile, "three promotions" mean promotion of the systemic designing in production and manufacture to a higher level, promotion of intelligent control to a higher and promotion of exquisite processing to a higher level, Li noted. And, "three breakthroughs" refer to efforts to make new breakthroughs in the innovation key production equipment, new breakthrough in developing brands in the fulfillment of the project, and also new breakthrough in increasing the value in use of leaf tobacco on a continued basis, according to Li. Also speaking at the meeting, leaders with the Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute in charge of fulfillment of the project briefed the participants on progress made in the research of generic technology for developing tobacco cutting lines for the production of Chinese-style cigarettes. At the same time, representatives from the eight enterprises designated to fulfill the project on a trial basis, including Shanghai Tobacco Group, Hunan Provincial China Tobacco Industry Corporation and Hubei Provincial China Tobacco Industry Corporation, reported their progress in fulfilling the project and in realizing targets for technical innovation, the problems existing and plans for fulfilling the work targets for a next period of time. Enditem