Tencel cigarette filters from Filtrona and Philip Morris. (1995)

This is the first page of an article written for Technical Textiles International (Aug 95) by Dick Shepherd, R&D Director of Filtrona, following the successful development of fibrillated lyocell paper for ultra low tar cigarette filters.  The first commercial papers were made by Ivan Gbur of J R Crompton and Balz Miller of Schoeller and Hoesch.

There was a second cigarette filter project running simultaneously with Philip Morris who, after we introduced them to the concept, were interested in using lightly hydroentangled Tencel staple nonwovens to simulate a tow to replace acetate tow.  The key players at PM were Bill Edwards and Navin Gautam. 

A third development involving annular high pressure water jets to fibrillate Tencel tow directly never got off the ground because the existing Tencel machines were incapable of making the tow denier required for filter tip use economically.