VapeAway has developed a technology designed to help reduce vaping dependency. According to the company, the VapeAway filter attaches to an existing e-cigarette pod, automatically working to remove toxins found in e-cigarettes with minimal impact on the quality of the vaping experience.
The patented VapeAway filter is said to stop nicotine before it enters the body by gradually reducing nicotine intake in levels, beginning at 25 percent and increasing to a 75 percent reduction over the course of nine weeks, thus reprogramming the brain to decrease cravings and reduce dependency.
“Every e-cigarette, regardless of its type, flavor or contents, contains dangerous chemical toxins,” says Ike Sutton, the founder of VapeAway. “VapeAway offers the first patented filter that removes those toxins. Until now, those who were dependent on nicotine have been directed to nicotine patches or gum as their recovery solution, both of which use nicotine to satisfy cravings and with that comes a laundry list of warnings and side effects.
“VapeAway’s patented technology does the opposite and does not administer a drug to help people quit a drug. Our filters stop the nicotine directly at the source and reduce the intake of harmful chemicals while users continue to vape, all the while ultimately helping people quit in the long term if they choose to do so.”
VapeAway says its Vapor Freeze 2.0 technology consists of a proprietary blend of military grade, nontoxic fibers that freeze potentially harmful toxic chemicals on contact, protecting vapers and others around them from unwanted chemicals and toxins entering their lungs.
The technology has been tested to ensure it meets VapeAway’s stated use cases and it effectively and consistently performs to achieve the stated impact for its users. Preliminary tests were conducted by Enthalpy Laboratories.
According to SGS North America, the VapeAway filter is 100 percent nontoxic.
Essentra Filters has appointed Lay Moi Kow as global operations director—filters, based out of Essentra’s Singapore office. Lay Moi joins the global filters leadership team.
Lay Moi has been with Essentra Filters since 2020, joining the company as regional Asia and global operational excellence director. Lay Moi was involved in setting up systems for quality and continuous improvement, building the Asia and global operations team and as a project director for the China Joint Venture Co., ensuring that the project was delivered on time and on target.
“I look forward to focusing on Essentra Filters’ strategic initiatives for sustainability, heated tobacco, and expansion into new markets,” says Lay Moi. “With support and commitment from Robert Pye, managing director and the team, I am confident that we will continue to deliver excellence to our customers.”
Pye was appointed managing director of Essentra Filters on Jan 6.
Essentra Filters has appointed Robert Pye as managing director of filters, based out of Essentra’s Singapore office.
Pye joined Essentra in August 2016 and was most recently the global operations director of the filters division. He succeeds Kamal Taneja, who will take up his new role as managing director of Essentra’s packaging division.
“I am excited to be taking over the new role as managing director of Essentra Filters and I thank Kamal for his hard work and contribution in developing the filters division business under his leadership,” said Pye.
“Our focus has always been to ensure our customers’ success, which we have built over 80 years of commitment to innovation and excellence in the tobacco industry. We continue to be committed to supporting our partners in innovating new products for the growing heated-tobacco segment and more sustainable products, such as our expanding portfolio of ECO range plastic-free filters.”
Essentra Filters has launched ECO Flute Filter following the recent launch of ECO Active Filter. ECO Flute was developed as a sustainable, non-plastic alternative to Essentra’s Combined Performance Superior (CPS) filters and is the latest product in Essentra’s proprietary ECO range sustainable filters.
“With this latest launch of our ECO Flute Filter, we are excited to be able to offer our business partners more sustainable options to our existing range of products,” said Essentra Filters Global Marketing Manager Seng Keong Low.
The Flute definition is comparable to existing CPS filters, providing the visual impact unique to this range. The design is customizable for length, circumference, pressure drop, flute length, and can be combined with other filter segments to suit customer requirements.
More information about Essentra Filters’ ECO range of products is available at the company’s website.
Essentra Filters has appointed Jake Aimson as general manager, Dubai, based out of Essentra’s Dubai, UAE manufacturing facility. Aimson has been with Essentra since 2003 and was most recently the commercial excellence director for Essentra Filters.
Aimson will be responsible for operational ownership of the Dubai site. This role will provide strategic operations excellence leadership in safety, compliance, customer service, operations and continuous improvement, as well as overall accountability for achieving strategic business targets in line with the regional and divisional strategic plan. Aimson’s overall priority is to rebuild the Dubai business and create a strong foundation for growth.
“Optimization of our current business is well underway, and we are quickly progressing by investing in both capability and people to be ready for future growth,” said Aimson.
“We are already involved in building new partnerships with customers who wish to co-create greater, sustainable value in their markets – with Essentra as the preferred solutions provider to the tobacco industry in MEA.”
Australian scientists are training oyster mushrooms to “eat” tobacco butts, reports ABC News.
Oyster mushrooms send out long thin strands of white mycelium to explore their surroundings and gather nutrients—but eating a cigarette butt will be a new dining experience for them, according to Amanda Morgan, founder and head of research and development at Fungi Solutions.
During the trial, the mushrooms slowly recognize the cellulose acetate in the filter of the cigarette butt and begin to eat it.
At the end of the process, the mushrooms will have eaten the microplastics in the cigarette butts’ filters, leaving behind a material that can be used to create other products, such as boxes to collect cigarette butts.
“They [the mushrooms] are used to the cellulose, but we need to introduce the other elements, just like training a baby to eat,” Morgan said.
“From there, you can take the culture and grow the next one.”
According to environmental organization No More Butts, about 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered worldwide every year.
Morgan aims to set up a remediation facility in Wollongong where butts can be transported to, treated and turned into usable materials.
Essentra Filters has launched ECO Active Filter, the latest product in its proprietary range of sustainable filters. Developed as an alternative to active carbon acetate filters, ECO Active is plastic-free and 100 percent biodegradable.
“Our commitment toward achieving a sustainable future has never wavered,” said Global Marketing Manager Seng Keong Low. “ECO Active is the latest offering in our ECO range of products, and we continue to innovate new, high-quality, eco-friendly products to address the sustainability requirements of regulators, customers and end consumers.”
The ECO Active Filter is customizable for length, circumference, pressure drop, carbon types or carbon sizes and can be combined with other filter segments to suit customer requirements.
Essentra is reviewing strategic options for its tobacco filters business, as it looks to focus on its component-making division for other sectors, reports Reuters.
The company, which has supplied filters to cigarette manufacturers for more than 80 years, said the review is expected to finish in the second quarter of 2022.
According to Reuters, Essentra has concluded that it should become a pure play global components business over time and that the strategic review of the filter division was the first step to achieving that.
Essentra’s filter division reported a 2.8 percent rise in revenue in the three months to September.
The company said its components business, which makes plastic molded, vinyl dip molded and metal items used in equipment manufacturing, automotive and electronics, performed strongly in the quarter.
The tobacco industry is facing heavy scrutiny and mounting regulations due to the health risks of its products.
Essentra declined to speculate on whether the firm would divest it cigarette filters business. “As of now, we are unable to comment on the final outcome of the strategic review which is targeted to conclude by second quarter 2022 as it is still ongoing,” a company spokesman told Tobacco Reporter.
Even in challenging times, filter and tow suppliers find new business opportunities in innovative nicotine products.
By Stefanie Rossel
Over the past years, manufacturers of acetate filter tow and cigarette filters have come to learn how to best cope with challenges. The continuous decline in global cigarette consumption since 2013, which also resulted in lower demand for tow and filters, has been one such issue.
Hyunyoung Park
In 2020, tobacco companies sold 5.06 trillion cigarettes worldwide, representing a decline of 3.7 percent compared to 2019, according to Euromonitor. Increasing restrictions on tobacco products as well as the rise of reduced-risk alternatives contributed to this development. “Philip Morris International’s conventional cigarette-free world mission is a big challenge to filter makers,” notes Hyunyoung Park, sales and business development manager at Taeyoung Industry Corp. of South Korea, a supplier of mono, dual and triple filters to multinational cigarette manufacturers.
The year 2020 added more trials for the tobacco industry, most notably the Covid-19 pandemic. At the ITGA’s Issues Day in November 2020, Shane MacGuill, Euromonitor’s senior head of tobacco research, said he expected combustible cigarette volume to decline further in the next five years, aided by a pandemic that left many governments scrambling to refill their coffers.
Harald Bruggeman
For the time being, the most tangible effect of the pandemic for suppliers of acetate tow is logistic in nature, says Harald Bruggeman, vice president of commercial acetate tow at Celanese in the U.S. “A challenge for the entire industry is that the global liner market remains tight with lower performance and higher freight rates that continue to climb,” he says. “To ensure supply chain security, Celanese has a global warehouse network and healthy inventory levels.”
Bruggeman notes that pandemic-related travel restrictions continue to impact business. To provide best possible service, he explains, Celanese provides remote sales and technical customer support by offering video conferences, online training, webinars, web-based software for item selection, filter and cigarette design calculations and RealWear devices, such as hands-free, voice activated, head-mounted tablets, for remote assistance.
The pandemic follows a period during which tow manufacturers were busy preparing for tighter regulation. In February 2018, the European Commission published the classification of titanium dioxide (TiO2), a delustering agent that had been used in paints and varnish, plastics, paper, printing inks and many other applications for about 100 years, as a suspicious carcinogen for inhalation. Although many scientific studies show that TiO2 does not cause cancer in humans, the classification will take effect Oct. 1, 2021. “The filter tow manufacturers are transitioning to acetate tow without added TiO2, which increases complexity in manufacturing, portfolio and supply chain,” Bruggeman says. “Celanese has completed all necessary preparations for the commercial production of acetate tow without added TiO2 at both manufacturing sites, i.e., Narrows, Virginia, USA, and Lanaken, Belgium.”
Jens Ebinghaus
Jens Ebinghaus, CEO of Swiss-based acetate tow manufacturer Cerdia, formerly Rhodia Acetow, stresses the positive side of this challenge. In November 2018, the company launched DE-Tow, a tow made of cellulose acetate that is free from TiO2. “Most of our customers have already switched to TiO2-free filter tow while others still use tow with TiO2,” he says. “Supplying both customer groups adds complexity to the manufacturing process and creates opportunities to the most flexible suppliers.” In 2019, Cerdia’s Freiburg, Germany, plant committed to invest close to $100 to strengthen its competitiveness, to foster the growing market share of specialty filters produced in Freiburg and to focus on product innovation as well as diversification.
Taeyoung Industry Corp. is developing filters with non-acetate tow and studying alternatives to conventional filter material.
Toward Increased Sustainability
While the pandemic is far from over, this summer brought about new challenges for the sector: On July 3, 2021, more parts of the European Union’s Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) entered into force, banning the sale of items such as plates, cutlery, straws and cotton bud sticks made of plastic as well as food containers and expanded polystyrene cups. The directive was drafted to fight marine pollution. Although cigarette filters are among the 10 single-use plastic products most often found on Europe’s beaches and seas, representing as much as 60 percent of all waste items, they are not among the prohibited products. Worldwide, around 98 percent of cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate, a bio-based polymer that biodegrades over several months to several years, depending on the conditions of the environment where it has been discarded.
Instead of the originally discussed consumption reduction targets for filter cigarettes, the European Parliament reached a provisional agreement stating that “the huge environmental impact caused by post-consumption waste of tobacco products with filters, discarded directly into the environment, needs to be reduced. Innovation and product development are expected to provide viable alternatives to filters containing plastic, and this development needs to be accelerated.” Through the introduction of extended producer responsibility (EPR), a reinforced application of “the polluter pays” principle, the provisional agreement seeks to further encourage innovation leading to the development of sustainable alternatives to tobacco product filters containing plastic.
More specifically, the directive will require producers to cover the costs of consumer awareness-raising measures and EPR schemes tackling the clean up of litter and its subsequent transport and treatment, the costs of data gathering and reporting, and the costs of collection of waste of tobacco filters discarded in public collection systems. EU member states have until Dec. 5, 2023, to set up ERP schemes for tobacco filters that contain plastic, but to date, there is no available guidance for member states as to how such EPR schemes should be implemented. As of July 3, all packaging of tobacco products with filters are required to be marked with a pictogram warning against littering.
“The most burning concern at the moment is the impact of the SUPD—how to deal with the directive and product solutions that are compatible with the criteria it sets out,” says Ebinghaus. “The role that biodegradability of filters and tow will play in the future depends heavily on littering regulations. Cellulose acetate is based on wood pulp, a renewable raw material. With Cerdia DE-Tow, we have already created a product that is characterized by certified rapid biodegradability. We are convinced that this topic will continue to accompany us in the future and are glad that we can already offer a future-proof solution to our customers.”
“The criteria for biodegradability under the SUP directive are not expected to be established by the EU until 2027,” notes Bruggeman. “The EC is concerned about potential misleading claims around biodegradability of filters as it could likely have an inverse effect on littering behavior. Certifications of biodegradability alone do not resolve the fundamental problem of reducing the impact of ‘littering’—thus, the measures called for in the EU SUP directive remain as important and necessary to be adopted, i.e., contribute to awareness-raising EPR, including cleanup, collection and waste treatment, and labeling requirements for cigarette packs.”
SK Low
Seeking the Gold Standard
Filter manufacturers are also busy trying to meet changing requirements for an expanding environmentally friendly products market. Taeyoung’s R&D department is working on filter development with non-acetate tow and is carrying out studies on the replacement of conventional filter material. Seng Keong Low (SK), global marketing manager at specialty filter manufacturer Essentra, explains that the greatest challenge now is to find the perfect substitute for cellulose acetate filters—“a gold standard, so to speak. While we have commercially launched paper-based filters from our ECO range, we also acknowledge that there are certain tradeoffs when using these alternative materials. That is why Essentra Filters continues to learn, innovate and improve upon these products to achieve that gold standard.” He relates that his company has several intermediary products within its portfolio of products, such as BiTech, which mixes cellulose acetate and paper, thus increasing the biodegradability of the product.
Sustainability issues aside, filter designers continue to seek innovative solutions beyond the usual range. Filter and tow makers observe an ongoing shift toward slim and superslim formats while capsule filters remain popular. “Outside of the EU, flavors continue to play a role in driving consumer demand, especially in countries like China, Japan and Korea,” says SK.
While cigarette consumption will likely continue to decrease, heated-tobacco products (HTPs) are creating new opportunities for filter and tow manufacturers. Like conventional cigarettes, HTP consumables require a—highly complex—filter. Cellulose acetate tow is found in vape products too; it can be used in e-cigarettes to prevent leakage of e-liquids. “We see great opportunities and great potential in developing and producing a broader spectrum of specialty items for more specific new-generation products and in the advancement, refinement and expansion of the [HTP] segment,” says Ebinghaus.
“We observe continuous innovation and product launches in the strong growing HTP market, e.g., PMI’s IQOS Iluma, BAT’s Glo Hyper plus, JT’s Ploom X or KT&G’s Lil Solid 2.0,” echoes Bruggeman. “Celanese partners with the major players in the HTP segment for the development of new filters for heated-tobacco sticks.”
Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.
Poda Lifestyle and Wellness has entered into a supply agreement with biodegradable filter manufacturer Greenbutts.
Greenbutts has developed a natural filter technology that was created to provide an alternative to the common nonbiodegradable cellulose acetate cigarette filter. Greenbutts created a natural, rapidly degrading cigarette filter using a proprietary blend of food-grade fiber materials including flax, cotton and manila hemp with no artificial compounds or chemical residues. The unique blend of materials is designed to allow for the same sensory experience and filter manufacturing run rates as acetate filters. Greenbutts filters will disperse in water within a few minutes and will degrade in compost within seven days as opposed to 10–15 years as is the case with traditional cellulose acetate filters.
“Poda is committed to ensuring that the company contributes to a brighter future for all of our stakeholders,” said Ryan Selby, Poda CEO, in a statement. “As CEO, I take this responsibility very seriously, and I am devoted to ensuring that Poda delivers industry-leading performance on our core principles of strong environmental management, responsible societal impacts and robust corporate governance. Pursuant to this commitment, I am very pleased to announce today that Poda has entered into a supply agreement with Greenbutts, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of biodegradable cigarette filters.”
“This supply agreement will provide the company with access to 100 percent biodegradable filters for use in our Beyond Burn Poda Pods. The inclusion of Greenbutts’ biodegradable filters into our already biodegradable and compostable Poda Pods allows Poda the ability to offer a completely biodegradable and truly compostable heat-not-burn product, something that has never been done in the heat-not-burn tobacco market. … We are thrilled to have secured this supply agreement.”
“We have spent the last 10 years relentlessly pursuing the perfect biodegradable cigarette filter,” said Tadas Lisauskus, co-founder and CEO of Greenbutts. “Now that our patented product is ready for commercialization, we are very pleased to have entered this supply agreement with Poda. Traditional cellulose acetate cigarette filters are among the single most commonly littered items globally, and we are committed to the goal of eliminating environmental pollution caused by improperly discarded cigarette butts. Greenbutts’ biodegradable filters are made from natural sources and quickly biodegrade in natural settings. Combining our proprietary biodegradable filters with Poda’s unique and proprietary biodegradable heat-not-burn cigarettes is surely a winning combination.”
