DIET and Recon to the Fore!

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Dry ice-expanded tobacco (DIET) and reconstituted tobacco have become indispensable components in a wide range of products, from cigarettes to MYO tobacco and even cigars and cigarillos. Tobacco Asia talks to two of the most important suppliers.

By Thomas Schmid

Danish outfit Airco DIET a.s. has for many years been the leading supplier of DIET plants around the world, from more modest ones to the real leviathans that can handle outputs of several thousand kilograms per hour. Based in the small town of Fredericia, the company has recently moved to a brand new facility just a few kilometers from the old head office. “Our new buildings have been designed to expressly match our needs, and the location will now combine our head and engineering offices with the production facilities,” explains the company’s director, Keld M. P. Laigaard.

Airco DIET looks back at a long and distinguished history, having co-invented the dry-ice expansion process of tobacco in 1978 in tandem with Philip Morris. The process was originally developed to replace similar methods, but which utilized environmentally harmful expansion agents. The solid-frozen CO2 (also known as dry ice) used in the DIET process was on the other hand “textbook due to the special characteristics of CO2 and it being 100% natural,” according to Laigaard. It also isn’t changing the leaf or other parts of the tobacco plant in a chemical way. Instead, the DIET process merely restores the plant cells that collapse during curing.

“We have now been involved in over 100 DIET projects around the world and have improved our process constantly along the way. Airco DIET and our team are highly specialized and we exclusively work with DIET plants and equipment,” Laigaard elaborates. The first plant the company once built and which somewhat resembled what is currently offered in terms of overall design was for Tabacalera in Cadiz, Spain. “That was a brand-new, novel design of a large DIET plant, thus many sections of the plant still had to be optimized during installation and test runs,” Laigaard recalls. “Of course, the plants we offer today are in all areas much gentler and efficient [than that particular project], but even the Cadiz installation practically flawlessly operated for more than a quarter century.”

It is this constant drive for furthering and perfecting its technology that has made Airco DIET the market leader that it is today. A modern DIET plant will offer high yield with minimum losses and significant utility savings. “It is common for our current DIET plants to have just around 1% loss through the plant, with savings of 30% in utility consumption compared to plants that we’ve built only 10 years ago,” asserts Laigaard. Apart from gigantic installations capable of processing of 2,400  kilograms (2.4 tons) per hour, it especially the large numbers of smaller plants built lately that have given the company the opportunity to implement and test new innovations and improvements quickly. “A 300 kilograms-per-hour plant can be up and running within 14 months, whereas a big DIET plant takes up to 2 years to complete and only then can provide actual operational feedback,” Laigaard says. All plants generally recover more than 99% of unused CO2 and recycle it back into the system, but according to Laigaard it is the actual consumption (i.e. the amount of CO2 that is absorbed) that provides a much more interesting and meaningful figure: “In our new DIET plants that consumption is now down to just 0.25 kg of CO2 per kg of produced expanded tobacco.”

The application of DIET has also expanded considerably since the early days. Originally, DIET was almost exclusively used as a neutral filler only. But today’s DIET can be produced in a way that it imparts its own distinctive flavor and can thus be used as the principal component of tobacco products. “A good example for this would be MYO tobaccos. The XXL containers of various brands that you find all over Europe are filled with mostly DIET,” explains Laigaard. “The consumer is generally well aware of the DIET content in volume tobacco and finds the improved filling capability so positive that these types of MYO tobaccos have become bestsellers.”

DIET also is used in mass-produced cigars, where it not only provides the manufacturer with huge cost savings but also the ability to design the cigar to have better air flow and draw characteristic and can also give a lighter flavor profile. “But the latest use of DIET is to enhance shisha tobacco,” add Laigaard. “It has turned out that shisha tobacco has a significantly better flavor absorption after the DIET process and thus uses 30% less flavoring agents during manufacturing. DIET shisha tobacco also shows a longer burning time in tests, ranging anywhere from 40 to 55 minutes. It maintains its bright color longer, thereby giving it a longer shelf life. And last but not least, the DIET process lowers the nicotine content.”

Thanks to its ubiquitous deployment in the modern tobacco industry, DIET is here to stay. But there is still another major aspect that lends DIET a central role: Regulations concerning certain flavors, conditioners and many other additives are becoming increasingly stringent on a global scale, with a long list of agents already being banned outright. DIET, on the other hand, is one of the few remaining permitted ingredients that allow manufacturers to design their products. And the latest news from the US FDA about the possible introduction of a mandatory drastically lower nicotine content across all cigarette brands have driven even more manufacturers to explore the possibilities offered by the DIET process.

Yet another commodity that has become of tremendous importance in the modern-day tobacco industry is reconstituted tobacco in its various types, its usage nowadays having the prime objectives of acting as a flavor enhancer, as well as decreasing the cost of a tobacco blend and lowering its nicotine content. However, the idea of “re-assembling” tobacco particles and dust into a re-useable product initially emerged as a cost-saving measure in the 1970s, being spearheaded by the so-called “Kimberly Clarke process.”

As currently the world’s third-largest supplier of “recon,” Istanbul-based Star Tobacco International trades approximately 2,500 metric tons per year, supplying both government tobacco monopolies and privately-owned small and medium-sized companies. “That trading volume represents approximately 15% of the company’s revenues,” discloses Dr. Iqbal Lambat, Star Tobacco’s president and c.e.o. “And the rate has been increasing over the past years, especially with regards to deliveries to government tobacco monopolies, with whom Star Tobacco is well positioned.” Lambat also predicts that this product segment will continue to grow as recon is used increasingly widely among small and medium-sized manufacturers, but also because ever more stringent “government legislation towards lower nicotine products will translate to more recon usage” in smoking products.

As such, Star Tobacco considers recon a core commodity in its portfolio (see side box), presently offering American Blend recon, Virginia recon, Oriental recon and, as of 2018, even kretek recon. Although the company currently sources its merchandise from non-owned factories, it will, in response to sharply rising customer demand, add two wholly owned factories to its supply chain in 2018, one in Bondowoso (Indonesia), the other in Pietermaritzburg (South Africa). “The Indonesian facility will cater exclusively to the conversion of tobacco waste and dust from kretek factories into kretek recon – the first such production facility available to small and medium-sized kretek manufacturers in Indonesia. Meanwhile, our South African facility will produce a paper type microfiber product for sale to government monopolies and private manufacturers in Europe, the Middle East, and South America,” explains Lambat. With North Africa, the Middle East, the Philippines, and Indonesia currently making up Star Tobacco’s main recon markets, Lambat projects to also be adding customers South America, South Africa, and the EU in the short term.

While recon rag is of course mostly used in cigarette blends, recon usage is also growing in cheaper, machine-made cigars. “These cigars by nature are on the cheaper scale of the market, but the cost of natural [leaf] binder and wrapper has soared through the roof as the number of farmers growing this type - mostly in Indonesia - has seriously declined,” elaborates Lambat. “Therefore, recon binder or wrapper is a good commercial option to ensure that cheaper cigars also remain affordable.” However, in both the US and Europe, the world’s two largest two cigar markets, current legislation requires that the natural tobacco content of the cigar recon binder must exceed 75% for the product to qualify as a cigar.

As Lambat already asserted, recon usage will continue to grow internationally in the long term, though. Together with expanded stems (CRES), it will be one ingredient that is going to make up an increasingly larger proportion in blends to ensure lower nicotine delivery as well as reduce cost. However, Jason Hwang, Star Group’s recon & North East Asia manager based out of South Korea, opines that in the short term the market will be “facing stagnant growth due to oversupply of recon.” Also, the price and inventory level of natural tobacco leaf has a strong influence on the recon market situation, he says. “For example, cigarette companies will use more tobacco leaf in their blend if they have too much leaf inventory, which will bring about less consumption of recon. But then the market soon thereafter will be emerging from this downturn again.”

Despite this seesaw mechanism, there is still room to expand recon usage, according to Lambat, who adds that “we project our recon sales to triple in the next three years.” Jason Hwang agrees and primarily hints at the effect the kretek but also the heat-not-burn markets may have. “Firstly, we strongly believe in the growth for kretek recon as general demand in Indonesia will expand. And Star Tobacco, as a recon manufacturer in Indonesia [through its soon-to-open factory there] is going to lead that expansion. Secondly, next-generation devices such as heat-not-burn also will generate new demand for recon. Star Tobacco has been spending a lot of energy, preparing well for this next-generation phenomenon. We are ready.”

Impex Vs. DIET

The Impex process was originally developed by Imperial Tobacco as an alternative to the DIET method for expanding tobacco by utilizing a gaseous chemical called iso-pentane. This provided Imperial with a process where they owned the rights, thereby eliminating royalty payments that existed back then for DIET. Apart from the fact that during Impex processing some of the environmentally unfriendly chemical escapes into the atmosphere, traces of iso-pentane also can be left behind in the final product itself. If a product contains Impex-treated tobacco, the chemical should therefore normally be listed as an additive on the pack. According to Airco DIET’s Keld Laigaard, the DIET process, on the other hand, leaves zero traces in the tobacco and the expansion ratio is much higher (25-50%) than what can be achieved with Impex. Although the company is also offering Impex plants, Laigaard confides that “we have not sold any plants at all,” citing the above reasons for it.