British American Tobacco Vietnam - Tobacco manufacturing

Cigarette manufacturing in Vietnam is a complex activity with a long supply chain and participation of numerous partners. To us, quality plays a crucial role and we make a great effort in every step of manufacturing to ensure our products to meet the expectation of our customers.

Cigarette manufacture involves cut rag processing, cigarette making and product packing.

Cut rag manufacturing

The process converts processed tobacco leaf that arrive in 200 kg cases into batches of cut rag that is ready to be made into cigarettes.

Preliminarily processed tobacco leaf is delivered from the Green Leaf Threshing plant to the British American Tobacco-Vinataba JV’s factory in Dong Nai Province. The factory is located at an area of 60,000 square meters and recognized as one of the most modern factories of the British American Tobacco Group. The factory has the most modern equipment with trademarks of Hauni (Germany), Dickinson Legg (UK) and such breakthrough technologies as KT2 cutter (for both stems and laminas of tobacco leaf), air-curing set, air convective curing machine and the newest generation of impurities-removing Tobacco Scan II.

After the processed tobacco leaf are delivered to the factory, they are checked for quality and carefully blended with other ingredients that the brand recipe may call for, such as flavouring or expanded tobacco.

Sustaining various types of tobacco ingredients and blending components plays a vital role.  Moisture content is also crucial.  The tobacco leaf is crumbled if it is too dry; it may be spoiled during storage due to high moisture content. The blended tobacco is treated with just the right amount of steam and water to make it supple and is then cut into the form used in cigarettes. The extra moisture is then removed so the cut rag can be given a final blending and quality check.

With the current capacity and operation technology, the factory of the British American Tobacco-Vinataba JV can manufacture more than 4 tons of cut rag per hour, or 17,000 tons a year. Cut rag from our factory accounts for 1/3 of the total amount manufactured in Vietnam.

Cigarette making & packing

In 2014, BAT formed a second partnership with Vinataba to establish the VINA-BAT JV Co. to produce cigarette sticks.

Modern and high-speed machines are used to produce filters, cigarettes and pack them into packets, 'outer' (cartons) and 'shippers' (cardboard boxes).

The technology has been improved dramatically over the years. Production process of cigarettes used to be manual. However, it is now fully controlled automatically. Product quality is a top priority. Quality of each cigarette stick is automatically controlled by machine, and advanced technology to ensure that it meets our global standard.

Packing machines put them into the branded packs, wrap the packs in protective film and put them into cartons and cases. There is quality inspection at each stage to make sure the cigarettes are properly protected before the completed packing and ready for distribution.