MACHINE THRESHED

Machine threshed tobacco leaf is the modern automated alternative to hand stripped tobacco leaf that is now commonly used all over the United States and Europe. The difference between hand stripped tobacco leaf and machine threshed tobacco leaf is that hand stripped tobacco leaf will produce whole leaf tobacco where machine threshed tobacco leaf will produce a tobacco leaf that is broken into smaller pieces.

Tobacco leaf is sent from the warehouse for processing with a relatively low moisture level to avoid spoilage and decay of tobacco leafs. Before threshing, tobacco leafs needs to be heated and moistened to prevent unwanted breaking of tobacco leafs during the threshing.

Threshers tear the tobacco leafs using rotating and fixed blades placed above the bent boxes which can vary in model and size. Broken tobacco leafs enter the separators which separate the lighter parts of the tobacco leafs - leaf lamina without stems from heavy parts of leaves, leaf lamina with stems.

It is normal that tobacco leaf blades cannot be separated from the stems in one round, so the process is repeated until the leaf blades are completely separated from the tobacco leafs. The current standard is that the tobacco processing facilities have 5 levels of threshing machines with a different number of separators in order to maximize efficiency.

After threshing, all products go through the process of drying. Here, moisture from every single piece of tobacco leaf is removed through the process of osmosis and the amount of moisture is unified in every single piece of tobacco leaf to a specified level.