Boveda invented the world’s first two-way humidity control in a ready-to-use packet. Inside Boveda’s semipermeable membrane are all-natural salts and purified water.

Boveda started with a frustrated cigar lover who also happened to be a humidor maker. Keeping his cigars properly humidified was a tough, labor-intensive job. Dr. Albert Saari, a retired General Mills chemist, found the answer in salt. When you supersaturate certain salts with pure water, they naturally regulate humidity.

Packages to let moisture pass in and out had never been done. So Esse found a material that had a high water-vapor transmission rate but stopped salt. Boveda’s patented packaging allows the cleanest, most purified water vapor to either be emitted or absorbed. Boveda acts on the environment around it. By adding and absorbing moisture, Boveda keeps the contents of a sealed container at a precise relative humidity (RH) level.

So, the humidor maker then called Sean Knutsen and Timothy Swail, two friends with business and marketing backgrounds, formed a new company to bring this simple yet remarkable invention to market. And in 1997, Boveda (then Humidi-Pak) was born.