Abstract: In the preparation of a production batch,the tobacco block of the unpacked tobacco grade which represents only a few percents of a cigarette blend has to be broken down to a weight in the same proportion to the batch as in the cigarette blend.It's a laborsome manual work causing considerable tobacco degradation and blending proportion fluctuations.The process was improved by bringing together the tobacco grades in question to make up a sub-blend common to several cigarette blends,and handled as a single element to be blended with the other tobacco elements to constitute a complete cigarette blend.In the improved process,97% of the tobacco in a production batch were of the form of whole-case,compared with the figure before improvement of only 50%.