The chronicle of Eger Tobacco Factory
The cigarette factory
significant changes. With the building of a second level and the addition of the manufacturing and processing block the capacity of the factory premises for the installation of new technology grew by 4,000 square metres. The modern, steam-powered boiler house was also finished, which was a sine qua non as far as the introduction of the new, revolutionary warm dampening preparation technique was concerned. Despite difficulties in paying for all this brand new equipment, the factory still managed to get its hands on a KT 400 rotary tobacco cutter from the West German Hauni company, which made use of the new heat technology to produce a soft-structured tobacco that filled the cigarettes very easily. With its installation the tobacco processing figures as well as the quality of the processed tobacco improved in leaps and bounds. A new Skoda tobacco-moistening machine, tobacco softener and vacuum boiler were purchased, and the modernisation of factory equipment was brought further forward with the introduction of conditioning cylinders and silos for the storage of the blended tobacco and cut tobacco. The transportation of the tobacco from the preparation stage right up to the loading funnels of the cigarette-making machines was carried out with pneumatic transportation equipment. 1963 saw the end of what was perhaps the greatest period of struggle the factory had ever known. It had taken the best part of thirty years for the old cigar factory to become a genuine, bona fide cigarette manufacturing plant. At that time there were only five factories left in Hungary; the Budapest-Lágymányos factory, the Pécs factory, the Debrecen factory, the Sátoraljaújhely factory and the Eger factory. In that year the number of staff in the Eger factory unit came to 626, and these people were using a very varied pool of equipment to produce 2 billion cigarettes a year, about 12% of total national consumption. The average salary per person stood Mrs Litványi department leader and the staff of Rapid DK 6 in 1961 with technician Kiss József in the centre
