Hand Stripped

Hand stripped tobacco leaf is where the stem has been stripped from the center of the leaf leaving two halves of a whole tobacco leaf.

Hand stripped tobacco is no longer commonly produced within Europe and the united states as tobacco manufactures moved to machine based separation known as machine threshed tobacco leaf however hand stripped tobacco leaf  is still produced by workers in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia .

Hand stripped is still preferred for premium tobaccos as the workers attention to detail ensures a very high quality whole leaf, however quality comes at a cost as hand stripped tobacco is exactly as it says on the tin – carried out by hand which drives up the production cost.

This traditional method of hand stripped tobacco whole leafs involves the manual separation of each tobacco leaf's mid rib otherwise known as the stem from the lamina by physically extracting it from the body of the leaf. Prior to carrying out this task, the tobacco leafs are conditioned with heat and moisture to ensure ease of separation.