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Following the success in the development of Blue Band, a technology for manufacturing cigarettes with Low Ignition Propensity (LIP), KT&G (CEO Min Young-jin) is to launch cigarettes to which this technology has been applied for the first time in the domestic market.

Cigarettes with LIP have a high probability of being put out under certain conditions, because part of the cigarette paper is coated with a special substance. Currently some countries, including the USA, Canada, and the EU, make it mandatory, but there are no relevant laws in Korea yet.

KT&G makes it a company policy to preemptively introduce cigarettes with LIP regardless of national legislation in order to faithfully discharge its corporate social responsibilities. Accordingly, it has decided to release three types of The One, which is the first cigarette with LIP in Korea, on July 23, and thereafter plans to successively expand the product line as soon as the related equipment is additionally installed.

The Blue Band independently developed by KT&G is a technology that involves coating the cigarette paper with a special material of natural properties in the high-speed cigarette manufacturing process, for which a total of five cases of patent application have been completed. This technology is rated as a process advanced one step higher than the existing technologies developed and used in foreign countries.

KT&G has succeeded in developing the technology that realized the function of LIP through thousands of self-tests and consumer and expert evaluations over the past three years, and is expecting that with the resulting import substitution effect, approximately more than 40 billion in foreign currency can be saved annually in the years ahead.

A company official concerned said, “Development of cigarettes with LIP was a focal project implemented by the top management, which stresses corporate social responsibility,” adding that “the resulting cost increase is planned to be absorbed internally.”

Caution: As cigarettes with LIP do not completely prevent fires, smokers must always be sure that cigarette butts are properly put out before throwing them away. Also, it is difficult to check a single cigarette to see whether or not it has LIP with the naked eye; it can be identified by the words Blue Band marked on the cigarette pack.