ULT expects a favorable Virginia tobacco crop this year

By: STA Date: 2023. 08. 29. 09:30

The acquisition of this year’s Virginia tobacco variety at Universal Leaf Tobacco (ULT) Magyarország Kft. began in the last week of August, according to expectations, the quality of the crop will be much better compared to the average of the past years – the agronomy director of the American-owned company dealing with the integration and acquisition of cultivation announced on Tuesday with MTI.

(Photo: Pixabay)

Tibor Fekete said that so far about 2,500 cartons of tobacco have been delivered to the purchase warehouse for pre-storage, the company hopes that this year’s more favorable weather conditions will ensure the purchase of the contracted amount of 2,100 tons. He explained that only a few producers experienced crop losses during the growing year, and in those farms where there was a significant degree of virus infection or elemental damage, the farmers tried their best to mitigate the damage they suffered.

Based on the visits to producers so far, it can be concluded that the quality of this year’s harvest is much better than the average of the past years

The delivered tobaccos are of equal quality, largely free of “green” – explained the expert. He added that significant progress has also been made in the field of removing foreign substances, so hopefully the items to be processed will not contain significant amounts of non-tobacco impurities. Tibor Fekete reminded that the work of their producers was greatly helped by the simplified purchase standard introduced this year, which significantly narrowed the number of purchase classes and the value differences between them. The new standard makes it possible to have a wider quality composition of tobacco within a given purchase class, he added. In 2022, ULT was able to purchase a total of 1,772 tons of Virginia tobacco from farmers, eight hundred tons less than the contracted amount.

MTI