Jobs go at Philip Morris Fortune as market share dips

Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco, the Philippines’ biggest cigarette manufacturer is cutting 640 employees from its Marikina plant; or about 30 percent of the plant’s workforce, according to a number of reports.

“This was a very difficult decision to make but in order to maintain a viable operation and to safeguard the future of our business in Marikina, it was necessary to take this step,” the company’s president, Paul Riley, was said to have told ABS-CBN News.com.

“We always treat our employees with the utmost respect, and all affected employees were given very generous separation packages, well in excess of legal requirements.”

Riley said the company had already issued notices of termination and ‘a source’ was said to have reported that employees had been told on Monday that they would be out of a job by February 15.

The company’s market share stood at 70.9 percent in June 2014 down from 76.7 percent in the same month of the previous year, according to a story in The Philippine Daily Inquirer citing ‘the latest industry data’.

In April last year, Philip Morris Limited announced that it was to stop cigarette manufacturing in Australia with the loss of 180 jobs from its plant at Moorabbin, Victoria. And later the same month, Philip Morris Holland (PMH) announced that it intended to end cigarette production at Bergen op Zoom, the Netherlands, with the loss of about 1,230 jobs.