DWG NO. MOI-1960 · ISO 9001:2015 · REV 66
The MK8 Programme: A Hundred-Plus Machines in Twenty Years
This is not a marketing story. It is a supply ledger. Between 1972 and 1992, MOI built and delivered more than a hundred MK8-series cigarette making machines, entry by entry, machine number by machine number.
What the Ledger Shows
MOI's supply record for the MK8 series reads like a map of the Indian subcontinent's cigarette industry. Over a hundred MK8SM and MK8D making machines, delivered across twenty years to the plants where the country's cigarettes were actually made: ITC's factories at Saharanpur, Bangalore, Parel, Kidderpore and Munger; VST in Hyderabad; GTC in Bombay and Baroda; Godfrey Phillips in Bombay and Ghaziabad; International Tobacco; National Tobacco; and J&K Cigarettes in Jammu.
The same ledger crosses borders: Alfa Tobacco in Bangladesh, Ceylon Tobacco in Sri Lanka, Janakpur Cigarette Factory in Nepal, Blue Nile Cigarettes in Sudan, and Bangladesh Tobacco Company in Dhaka. Alongside the makers went dozens of M2 Duplex packing machines to the same floors, plus PM4 filter rod machines and TCM tobacco cutters, one of which went to Yugoslavia.
The record even notes how the machines were used: most were linked by their owners to German-made Max packers. MOI machines ran in mixed international lines, holding their own beside European equipment.
Upgraded on the Customer's Own Floor
The entry that says the most about MOI's engineering is one line at the bottom of the record: dozens of running MK8SM machines were converted to MK8D specification (not replaced, converted) using an upgradation kit MOI designed and supplied.
Designing a kit that brings a running production machine up to a newer specification, on the customer's floor, without a rebuild, requires exactly the thing MOI's heritage rests on: complete command of the machine's drawings, tolerances and part interfaces. It is the same command that lets MOI manufacture retro-fittable spares today for machines that have been in service for decades.
Converted on the customer’s own floor with MOI’s upgradation kit: no rebuild, no replacement, no lost production line.
By the Numbers
Every figure below is taken directly from the supply record, nothing estimated
The Install Base Behind Our Spares Business
Cigarette making machines do not retire quickly. Machines from this programme ran for decades, many far beyond, and an installed base that large is precisely why MOI's spare parts operation exists at the scale it does. The drawings, patterns and part-numbering system that built this install base are the same ones MOI uses today to manufacture retro-fittable spares for MK-series machines still in service.
If you run an MK8, MK9 or M2-series machine anywhere in the world, the record above is the reason MOI can support it: we did not reverse-engineer this install base. We built it.
The Machines in This Record
All four lines are still supported by MOI today: machines and spares
MK8D Cigarette Making Machine
D-spec makerThe upgraded specification of the programme
View Machine Details →MK8SM Cigarette Making Machine
The workhorseThe single largest entry in the record
View Machine Details →M2-10s Duplex Packing Machine
Line partnerPacked for the same production floors
View Machine Details →PM4 Filter Rod Making Machine
Filter rodsFilter rods for the making lines
View Machine Details →Running an MK-Series Machine Today?
The team that supplied this install base still supports it: machines, upgrade programmes and retro-fittable spares manufactured from the original drawings where we hold them.