- k - 



25 cents or less include nearly 90 percent of those consumed, while $k percent 

 sell for 15 cents* or less. It appears reasonable to expect that eventually 80 

 percent or more of all cigars will have processed binders, as improvements are 

 made in the making and use of the binders. 



Tobacco Required Per 1,000 Cigars 



The quantity of binder in cigars varies with the size and shape of the 

 cigar, the kind of tobacco, and, to an extent, with the efficiency of the 

 cigar-making operation. A thousand cigars of the same size have about the 

 same number of pounds of binder in them, whether processed or natural. For 

 the period 1950- 5^- > a thousand cigars contained, on the average, 2.42 pounds 

 of binders. These binder cuts came from about 5*25 pounds, packed weight, 2/ 

 of tobacco sorted for binders. The remainder consists of I.98 pounds of waste 

 stems and fine leaf particles, and O.85 pounds of cuttings recovered and used 

 in scrap chewing tobacco or short fillers. Distributing this loss between the 

 binders and cuttings, in proportion to the weight of each, gives a net packed 

 weight requirement per 1,000 cigars of 3*88 pounds for natural binders and 

 1.37 pounds for the cuttings, or the total of 5«25. 



The minimum requirement for a pound of processed binder is 0.9 pound of 

 tobacco, packed weight. However, two recent developments indicate that this 

 figure can be expected to increase to 1.0 pound of tobacco, packed weight, to 

 produce 1.0 pound of processed binder. One of these developments is aimed at 

 structural improvement of the processed binder and the other is the desanding 

 of at least a part of the tobacco content to reduce machine maintenance prob- 

 lems. A thousand cigars with 2.42 pounds of processed binders requires 2.18 

 to 2.42 pounds, packed weight, of tobacco. This is 56 to 62 percent of the 

 3.88 pounds needed when natural binders are used. The difference is mainly 

 due to the use of the entire tobacco leaf (including stems and cuttings) in 

 making the processed binder, and, to a smaller extent, to additional ingred- 

 ients. The effect that use of processed binders would have on the quantity of 

 binder tobacco in 6 billion cigars, with varying proportions having natural 

 binders, is shown in table 1. 



The quantity of tobacco required as natural binders for 6 billion cigars 

 would be 23.3 million pounds at 2.42 pounds per 1,000 cigars. If processed 

 binders were used on half the cigars, the quantity required would be 11.6 

 million pounds for natural binders and 6.5 to 7»3 mill ion pounds for processed 

 binders, a total of 18.1 to 18.9 million pounds, or 4.4 to 5»2 million less 

 than with a-1 1 natural binders. 



2/ Tobacco takes on and gives off moisture readily, changing weight by 

 the amount of moisture. For this reason, tobacco is weighed at several stages 

 as it passes through the marketing channels; for instance, when sold by the 

 grower (farm sales weight), and when packed into cases or other containers to 

 be stored and handled (packed weight). All calculations in this report where 

 farm sales weight is used have been based on a conversion factor of 1.04 from 

 Tracked weight. 



