What size tobacco curing tunnel do you need?

A curing tunnel has to keep pace with the real bottleneck, which is how much green leaf comes off the land each day at peak reaping. Size around the peak rather than the average, or the tunnel backs up exactly when the season is busiest.

So we start with your hectares and expected yield, work back to a daily curing throughput in kilograms, and match a tunnel in the ROC Super Eco Tunnel range to it.

The ROC Super Eco Tunnel range runs from the RS-72 up to the RS-219, with daily throughput from roughly 2,000 kg to around 6,000 kg of green leaf a day, and several models can be extended in stages. As a rough guide, a single ROC site sizes comfortably up to around 80 hectares of tobacco.

A site can be built with more capacity than that, but before you chase a bigger number it is worth being clear about why we point almost every farm at a single crop.

You can raise a site's seasonal capacity to around 120 hectares by staggering a second planting about a month after the first. We can build for that, but we do not recommend it.

In our experience a single, well-timed crop of around 80 hectares is always the better decision. One crop gets your full attention through reaping and curing, it grades better, and grade is where tobacco makes its money. Our guide on one crop versus two goes through the reasoning in full.

Several tunnels in the range can be extended, so you do not have to build your final capacity on day one. Many farms start with a tunnel sized to this year's crop and a layout that leaves room to grow, then add capacity once the first season has paid for itself.