Author: Staff Writer

  • Imperial and its Kiev employees help spruce up local park

    A number of Imperial Tobacco’s Ukraine-based employees have spent a weekend sprucing up a park in the capital Kiev as part of an ongoing community investment partnership.

    Around 30 Imperial people from different functions came together for the urban rejuvenation project in the Golosiivsky district, near to Imperial’s offices on the outskirts of the city.

    Imperial paid for new lighting, benches and a decorative floating water fountain to be installed, and the volunteers helped by clearing away rubbish and planting flower beds.

    Earlier this year Imperial signed a partnership agreement with the local authority to support community projects in this rundown area of the Ukrainian capital.

    “We employee around 800 people inKievand this district is very close to our office and the factory,” said Eugene Walsh, general managerUkraine.

    “As a responsible business we are happy to support improvement projects such as this which help us to give something back to the local community.”

  • Swedish photographer’s Black Box to be unveiled by Iggesund in Moscow

    A new Black Box is due to be unveiled during an exhibition at the Flacon Club in Moscow on Thursday.

    For almost two years, Iggesund Paperboard has been running the Black Box Project, which has challenged well-known international designers and design companies to fill a black box of a specified format with contents that in some way test the limits of Iggesund’s Invercote paperboard.

    Six designers have taken part in the project so far and their works have been unveiled at exhibitions in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Milan and New York.

    When the doors open at the Flacon Club on December 6, a new box will be unveiled with contents created by the Swedish photographer and film director, Jens Assur.

    Assur began his career as a photographer for the daily press and, in the 1990s, he became Sweden’s top award-winning photojournalist.

    Later, he gradually left the daily press and began focusing on filmmaking. His films, such as The Last Dog inRwandaand Killing the Chickens to Scare the Monkeys, have won multiple international awards.

    Partly as a result of this recognition, at the beginning of 2012 he was the first Scandinavian to win the Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award, the Sundance Festival’s prize for promising filmmakers.

    Nevertheless, he didn’t hesitate for a second when asked to take part in the Black Box Project. “As a creative artist, it’s rare that I have the opportunity to work so freely and at such a high artistic level in projects developed by customers,” he said. “But in this case we could do so on both a conceptual and intellectual level.”

    Carlo Einarsson, director market communications at Iggesund Paperboard, was said to be ‘very pleased’ with Assur’s participation in the project. “We’re looking for creative individuals who really push the limits of what can be done with Invercote,” he said.

    “But the project is also a tribute to all the designers who have chosen over the years to make fantastic creations using Invercote as their starting point. We’re especially pleased by the great interest our exhibitions have received from designers and the graphic industry in many parts of the world.”

  • RAI quarterly dividend payable January 2

    Reynolds American Inc’s board of directors has declared a quarterly dividend on the company’s common stock of $0.59 per share ($2.36 per share annualized).

    The dividend is payable on January 2 to shareholders of record on December 10.

    RAI said that this was the 34th consecutive quarterly cash dividend that it had declared since it became a public company on July 30, 2004.

    RAI’s stated policy is to return about 80 per cent of its current-year net income to shareholders in the form of dividends.

  • Stiff fines for smokers, drinkers, music lovers, campers and those walking cats

    Starting next month, anyone caught smoking, drinking, camping, blasting music or engaging in any other illegal activities at Boulder Creek parks, California, is to be fined heavily, according to a story by Kimberly White for the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

    The fines, which are referred to also as ‘fees’, will range from $160 for infractions, such as possessing an open container of alcohol, to $484 for misdemeanors, such as consuming alcohol. And no matter how the offense is classified, a third violation within one year will cost nearly $900.

    The fees gave law enforcement another tool to keep order in public spaces, said Tess Fitzgerald, who is on the board of directors of the Boulder Creek Recreation and Park District.

    The fees are related to an ordinance the board adopted two years ago, listing about 20 prohibited activities, which, in addition to smoking, drinking, playing loud music and camping, include hunting, fishing or harming animals, introducing dogs and cats, lighting fires and damaging district-owned property.

  • Earnings up at Donskoi Tabak

    Russian cigarette maker Donskoi Tabak on Nov. 20 reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of RUR1.86 billion ($ 59.3 million) in January-September 2012, up 26 percent from a year ago, reports Prima-Tass.

    Net revenue jumped 71 percent year-year to RUR19.7 billion, volumes rose 2 percent to 23.5 billion cigarettes, and the company’s average cigarette price increased 16 percent to RUR25.60 rubles per pack following an excise tax hike.

    In January-September 2012, Donskoi Tabak’s cigarette output, at 23.5 billion pieces, was flat compared with the same period in 2011. The company exported 4.4 billion cigarettes worth $34.8 million in the nine-month period, up 8 percent from like 2011.

  • Proposal to raise smoking age

    Junior Health Minister Martin van Rijn plans to introduce legislation to raise the Dutch legal age to buy tobacco products from 16 to 18, reports DutchNews.nl.

    Earlier this month, the Dutch cigarette industry association SSI, the smoking tobacco association VNK, and Philip Morris Benelux, called for raising the legal tobacco buying age.

    Anti-tobacco group Stivoro has blamed government policies, including Health Minister Edith Schippers’ 2010 decision to relax the country’s smoke-free law to exempt bars smaller than 70 square meters, for an anticipated increase in the adult smoking rate to 26.2 percent by the end of 2012.

  • Belarus braces for tax hike

    The Belarusian government will increase tobacco excise tax rates by between 50 percent and 100 percent, starting Jan.1, reports Oreanda-News.

    The excise tax rate on filtered cigarettes will increase by 55.6 percent to 110 percent, depending on the price group. The excise tax rates on smoking and pipe tobacco, and cigars will increase by 66.7 percent, while the rate on cigarillos will rise by 73.8 percent.

  • Report dismisses industry claims about plain packaging

    A report commissioned by Cancer Research UK dismisses the tobacco industry’s claims that the U.K. government’s plans to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes will boost the trade in illegal cigarettes, reports HealthCanal.

    According to the report, which was prepared by Luk Joossens, advisor to the World Bank, the European Commission and World Health Organization on illicit tobacco trade, producers of counterfeit cigarettes find all existing cigarette packaging easy to forge, and that introduction of plain packaging is unlikely to cause more counterfeiters to make more fake packs.

    Noting that producers of counterfeit cigarettes are able to provide “top quality packaging at low prices in a short time,” Joossens said “plain packaging will not make any difference to the counterfeit business.”

    Cancer Research UK’s director of tobacco control Jean King said the tobacco industry “has a track record of facilitating smuggling and often says policies that cut smoking will increase smuggling, even though smuggling has been falling for a decade.”

  • Australia’s plain packaging an “anomaly”

    Morgan Stanley analysts believe the spread of plain packaging beyond Australia may be “very slow.”

    Capital markets have been concerned that Australia’s plain tobacco packaging law–the world’s first–could spread to other nations, ultimately commoditizing the tobacco category by hurting brand equity and reducing manufacturers’ pricing power.

    The analysts base their optimism on the facts that there is no evidence that the measure will reduce tobacco use or youth initiation and that such legislation appears both “extreme and disproportionate.”

    They also point out that plain packaging will “almost certainly” fuel the black market, thus reducing tax revenues, and that the legislation arguably violates various international trade rules.

    The analysts suggested that the nation’s geographic positioning may have led policy makers to believe that the country would be largely immune to contraband.

    Although the Commonwealth still faces strong legal challenges under a Bilateral Investment Treaty with Hong Kong and the World Trade Organization, the failure of the industry’s constitutional challenge in the country’s High Court “reflects the unique nature of Australia’s ‘protection’ of trademarks and intellectual property,” the analysts said.

  • E-cigarettes may surpass NRT sales

    Euromonitor International believes the value of the global trade in electronic cigarettes may soon exceed that of non-prescription nicotine-replacement products. In a recent report, the market intelligence provider estimated the worldwide e-cigarette market at $2 billion, compared with $2.4 billion for the NRT market, excluding prescription sales.

    The report also highlights the increasing involvement of traditional tobacco companies in e-cigarettes. As examples, it highlights the ventures of Lorillard, which acquired Blu eCigs for $135 million in April 2012, and Swisher International, which launched its own brands of e-cigarettes and e-cigars this year.

    Euromonitor predicts that by 2050, e-cigarettes and other non-combustible smoking alternatives will be worth 4 percent of the overall tobacco category.

    E-cigarettes are currently largely unregulated across the world, according to the report, although some countries, such as Argentina, have banned them, while others, such as the United States, have classified them as tobacco products.

    There is speculation that the EU is planning to ban e-cigarettes that are not registered pharmaceutical products, the article said.

    “Should any future legislation clamp down on e-cigarettes that are not registered pharma products, tobacco companies such as BAT with their pharma-approved devices and those companies with the financial clout to afford the approval process will be poised to pick up the slack,” the article said.