BAT Vietnam - About tobacco

Putting customers first

What is a cigarette? Not all cigarettes are the same. Smokers around the world search for different tastes and strengths. Therefore, we aim for excellence in every step of manufacturing to provide the best products for our customer experience.

The climate conditions in Vietnam are suitable for tobacco cultivation.

The tobacco plant is in the same botanical family as tomatoes, potatoes, chili and egg plants. It integrates well into environmentally friendly crop rotations, benefitting subsequent crops like maize, rice etc.

Tobacco types

In Vietnam, there are three types of tobacco to be grown and cultivated, including flue cured Virginia (FCV), air cured, and sun cured type; in which FCV accounts for 80%-90% of total production. The main areas of tobacco cultivation in Vietnam are Cao Bang, Lang Son, Bac Kan, Thai Nguyen in the North; Gia Lai, Dak Lak, Ninh Thuan in the Central; and Tay Ninh in the South.

Growing

There are about 10,000 – 12,000 tobacco seeds per gram – it looks rather like powdery coffee. The seeds are so small that they have to be nurtured in specially protected seedbeds for 60 days before transplanting to the field. A couple of weeks after transplanting, soil is cultivated and built up high ridge along the row for protection and to let them develop a good root system. About two months after transplanting, the flowers and some of the upper leaf are ‘topped’ to concentrate growth in the remaining leaf. As the plants grow, the farmer provides appropriate nutrition and watches out for pests.

Harvest

In a few countries the crop is mechanically harvested, but more typically the farmer will harvest by hand over two months, taking off two to four leaf per plant as they ripen.

Curing

Curing is a carefully controlled process used to achieve the texture, colour and overall quality of a specific tobacco type.

During the early stage of curing, leaf starch is converted into sugar, and the tobacco changes colour from green to lemon, to yellow, to orange to brown, like tree leaf in autumn.

There are four main curing methods:

Air-curing: Air-cured tobacco, such as Burley, is hung in unheated, ventilated barns to dry naturally until the leaf reaches a light to medium brown colour. At this point, there are virtually no sugars left in the leaf.

Flue-curing: Heat is introduced into a barn via pipes from an exterior furnace, like radiators connected to the central heating system. This controlled heat allows the leaf to turn yellow/orange, at which point they are fixed, containing a high amount of sugar. Virginia tobacco is flue-cured.

Sun-curing: leaf is strung out on racks and exposed to the sun for 12 to 30 days. The sun's direct heat fixes the leaf at a yellow to orange colour with a high sugar content.  Oriental is the most prominent of the sun-cured tobaccos.

Fire-curing: Fire-curing follows the same principle as producing smoked ham. Brushwood is burned under the leaf, drying the tobacco and producing a smoky fragrance. This is mainly used in pipe tobaccos or Fine Cut.

After curing, the farmer grades the leaf into different leaf positions, qualities and colours, packs them into 30-50kg ‘farmer bales’ and takes them to a buying center or auction for sale.

Leaf processing

After curing, the leaf is processed through a green leaf threshing plant. During threshing, the lamina is separated from the stem and subjected to a series of quality checks to ensure all sand, dust, scraps and foreign matter are removed. During processing, the moisture in the tobacco is brought down to a safe ‘keeping’ level and the processed tobacco is packed into 200kg cardboard boxes for shipping to manufacturing sites.