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House of Sampoerna in the complex of the oldest
major production facility
of Sampoerna, known as Taman Sampoerna Plant. It is still
in operation
even until today. On working days, more than 3,200 people
are working
in this plant now. Most of them are women cigarette rollers,
hand-rolling
Dji Sam Soe cigarettes at a speed of more than 325 sticks
per hour.
The factory was and still is a very busy place. As early as
five in the
morning, workers would begin arriving for breakfast served
either at the
Sampoerna canteen or from the hundreds of street vendors who
lined the
streets leading to the factory. In the past, hand blending
would begin by
5:30am with both men and women working at the blending compound.
Hand-
rolling would start at about six in the morning and continue
until three or four
in the afternoon, depending on market demand of the cigarettes.
In the old days, Taman Sampoerna Plant produced not only hand-rolled
kretek
cigarettes, but also machine made brands, including Sampoerna
Star, Summer
Palace and Statue of Liberty. Sampoerna Star was a filtered
product, one of the
first filtered cigarettes in Indonesia. The clove or kretek
products names were
simply the blend numbers of the product, such as “123”,
“720” and “678”.
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