The Mac Baren Tobacco Company’s roots go back to 1887. Today, they are one of the largest pipe tobacco production facilities in the world. Mac Baren is located in the beautiful town of Svendborg, Denmark and comprises several buildings on an incredibly large campus. Sykes Wilford of SmokingPipes.com, and I made the visit to Mac Baren together. As soon as we got out of the car in the parking lot, we could smell the delicious aroma of the tobacco being processed. We are instantly smiling before we even have both feet on the ground. I feel more excited than I did as a kid on my first visit to Disney World.
As you can imagine, when you have the owners of SmokingPipes.com and PipesMagazine.com together, there is going to be a lot of pipes and tobaccos involved. We get out of the car and open the back where we have our individual collections of pipes and tobaccos we brought for the trip. As I start reaching for what I want to bring inside, Sykes, reminiscent of Clemenza in The Godfather, says; "Take the pipes, leave the tobacco." I guess it is a good policy to show up sans tobacco when you are visiting one of the largest tobacco factories in the world.
I don’t think we could have made this visit more enjoyable if we tried. We got to see all kinds of really neat machinery producing many of our favorite products, we smoked wonderful tobacco, drank amazing coffee and even had excellent food for lunch. Not only that, but I had a Mac Baren executive personally pack my pipe for me. I think the only thing we were missing would be a harem of dancing girls. (Actually, Per did ask if I could bring the Pipe Babes next time.)
Please enjoy Part 1 of our video tour of the Mac Baren Tobacco Factory, which runs about 15-minutes, and watch for Parts 2 & 3 in the coming days as well. After the video, we have additional photos and text.
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Raw tobacco is stored in bales weighing 200 kilos each. There are several different types of Virginia tobacco, from Brightleaf all the way to dark fermented. The labels are shortened here to read "Virgin", but it is really to mean "Virginia".
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This tobacco is waiting to be processed. It has so far been untouched by the factory.
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Tobacco comes from all over the world. You can see some Burley from Paraguay above, followed by Maple Sugar and Pure Licorice Extract.
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Tobaccos are pressed under extreme pressure for varying amounts of time to make flake tobaccos. The last picture is of machinery used for casing the tobacco.
The Mac Baren Tobacco Factory Tour continues in Part 2 … coming soon.
