Tobacco Terminology
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American  
Blend  		 The most popular type of blended cigarette, made from a mixture of flue-cured or Virginia tobaccos, burley and oriental tobaccos.
Bale, Burley  
Farmer  		 A bale of burley tobacco weighing approximately 85 pounds. Up to 8 farmer bales can make up a burley pile.
Bale, Flue-  
Cured  
Farmer  		 Green flue-cured tobacco baled prior to marketing weighing approximately 850 pounds.
Belly Tag   A tag used for identifying a pile of tobacco and for verification of weight. The bar code on the belly tag should be the same as the bar code on the ticket (coupon).
Blending   The process of combining specified green or redried grades of tobacco as prescribed by customer.
Burley (or  
Maryland)  		 A type of air-cured tobacco which is used in the American-blend cigarette. Burley is grown in a number of countries including the United States, Brazil, Malawi, Mexico and Italy.
Buyer   A representative of a tobacco leaf merchant responsible for purchasing green tobacco.
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Case   A corrugated cardboard container for use to pack redried tobacco. A case holds approximately 440 pounds (200 Kgs.).
Conditioning   Technical term for adding moisture to cured tobacco to render it supple enough to be handled, processed or manufactured in an optimum manner with minimum breakage, also called "Ordering".
Congestion   Volume status of green tobacco inventories.
Curing   The process of drying freshly harvested tobacco leaves. Flue-cured tobacco is cured with artificial heat; burley is cured or dried in sheds or barns.
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Dark Air  
-Cured  		 A large group of tobaccos which are used in the manufacture of dark cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products. Dark tobaccos are generally fermented after curing.
Dealer   A federally-approved tobacco broker.
Dickie John   Instrument in the laboratory that is used for quick moisture testing.
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English  
Blend  		 Type of formulation and, by extension, a type of cigarette made wholly or almost wholly of flue-cured tobacco.
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Feed-ins   Redried tobacco that is added to the blend.
Filler   Blended, cut and flavored tobacco ready for cigarette manufacture. Also a neutral tobacco used in cigarette production for filling capacity rather than flavor.
Flue-cured   "Bright Leaf" tobacco grown in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida that is heat-cured in enclosed barns. Flue-cured tobacco is also grown in Brazil, Zimbabwe, India, Canada, China and numerous other countries.
Foreign  
Matter  		 Any non-tobacco materials that are found and removed from tobacco during processing.
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Grading   The classification of tobacco according to specific physical characteristics, such as body, color, and stalk position.
Green  
Tobacco  		 Flue-cured or air-cured tobacco that has not been through the redrying process.
Green  
Weight  		 Weight of a tobacco leaf delivered by the farmer before processing, redrying and final packaging.
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Hogshead   A cylindrical wooden container about four feet in diameter and four feet in height and holds approximately 1,000 pounds. A hogshead is composed of two mats and two heads.
Holding  
Room  		 Temporary holding area for tobacco that has been processed, prior to being assigned a storage location.
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Leaf Room   Green storage area. Tobacco is palletized by grade and manually assigned a leaf room location by a leaf room supervisor or spotter.
Long   A pile of tobacco that was not scanned at shipping as part of a load but was received when unloading the load at the stemmery or storage.
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Nested  
Green  
Unit  		 A green unit containing foreign matter or unusable tobacco that has been deliberately added to the tobacco to add weight to the pile.
On-hand   Market green inventory sorted by warehouse, or grade, or belt, or town, or processing facility, or storage, or account.
Ordering   See "Conditioning".
Oriental   A type of tobacco, distinguished by its relatively small leaves and aromatic qualities. Grown primarily in Greece and Turkey, it is used in English-, American- and Oriental-blend cigarettes.
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Packing   Placing processed or redried leaf tobacco into cases, boxes or hogsheads for long-term storage, transport and aging.
Picking  
Grade  		 Tobacco that does not meet grade specifications, especially for color, that is removed during processing. Pickings must be tracked by production run because they affect yield. Pickings are approximately one half to one percent of annual production.
Pipeline   Green tobacco in transit from the market.
Press   Machinery used to compact tobacco into packed units.
Priming   Method of harvesting in which the tobacco leaves are picked individually or in leaf groupings as they ripen on the plant; usually refers to flue-cured tobaccos.
Prize Room   Area in stemmery where redried units are packed, weighed and tagged.
Processing   Collective name for all those processes to which leaf tobacco is subjected from the moment it is delivered to the stemmery up to the completion of the cut blend; includes threshing or stemming, redrying and blending.
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Redried  
Tobacco  		 Tobacco that has been conditioned according to customer processing specifications for grade, size, moisture, etc.
Regrader   A company representative with the authority to reclassify purchased green tobacco.
Re-weight   The weight recorded at the receiving department of the tobacco merchant for a green unit.
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Sheet   A burlap material used by farmer to wrap piles of flue-cured tobacco.
Short   A pile of tobacco and ticket that was scanned at shipping as part of a load but not received when unloading.
Spotter   Individual who assigns green tobacco storage locations within the Leaf Room or outside green storage. The Spotter also locates tobacco in the Leaf Room or outside green storage when needed by the blending line.
Stemmery   A facility that processes tobacco to produce redried tobacco per customer specifications.
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Threshing   The process of cutting up the tobacco leaf and removing the stems.
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Usage   Amount of green tobacco consumed in the production process to create redried product. 
Vacuum  
Chamber  		 Machinery used at a stemmery to remove and add moisture as part of the conditioning process of green tobacco.
Wrapper   The outer covering of a cigar, consisting of a strip of tobacco cut from a leaf.
Yard Dog   The driver and the utility vehicle used at a stemmery to transport a trailer of green tobacco from a stemmery’s "parking lot" to the receiving door of the processing facility.
Source: Tobacco Encyclopedia, Ernest Voges, published by Tobacco Journal Interest Fund (1984) and company documents.
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