Author: Staff Writer

Figures published last week by France’s national drugs watchdog showed that the number of cigarettes sold in France fell by 7.6 percent last year, according to a Naharnet story.

Sales of hand-rolling tobacco continued to rise but, at 2.6 percent, more slowly than in recent previous years.

And for the first time since 2005, the overall value of tobacco-product sales shrank in 2013.

One survey was said to have put the proportion of adults who smoke every day at about 27 percent, down from more than 33 percent in 2010.

Health experts were quoted as saying it was too early to say if a corner had been turned. Survey results varied and the line between regular (daily) and occasional smoking was hard for researchers to assess accurately.

But the Naharnet story said it seemed that the combined impact of recent price hikes—at a time of economic stagnation—and the “phenomenal success” of e-cigarettes might be encouraging millions of French smokers to reassess their habit.

Excessive rain has hit Cuba’s leaf tobacco harvest, with the important growing districts of San Juan y Martínez and San Luis being severely affected, according to a story by Ivet González for Inter Press Services.

González reported that San Juan y Martínez and San Luis, which between them provide about 86 percent of the tobacco used in manufacturing Havana cigars, had suffered from too much rain since the season started in November.

The excessive rain has meant that some farms have had to replant their tobacco three times, so planting deadlines have had to be moved, causing delays to other aspects of the production process.

The full story is at http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/untimely-rains-hit-cuban-tobacco-harvest/.

More than 1,000 retailers have gone behind the scenes at one of Imperial Tobacco’s factories during the past 18 months as part of a trade partner initiative in France.

The latest event took place at the company’s cigarette factory near Nantes, with local tobacconists being given a guided tour of the Carquefou site (pictured).

The factory visit was part of an ongoing initiative by Seita that started in 2012 to help retailers learn more about Imperial’s brands.

The tobacconists were said to have been shown every aspect of the manufacturing and supply chain process and then to have been given the opportunity to quiz factory manager Sébastien Depierre.

“Most had never been inside a tobacco factory and were naturally curious to know more about a product they sell every day,” said Depierre.

All tobacco companies operating in Zimbabwe’s Hurungwe district will be required from the next tobacco growing season to sign with Hurungwe Rural District Council (HRDC) a memorandum of understanding (MOU) regulating their operations, according to a story in The Herald.

This follows concerns that tobacco contractors and farmers have not been complying with council bylaws and the tenets of corporate social responsibility.

The HRDC chief executive officer, Joram Moyo, said that tobacco farming was having a negative impact on the district’s environment and, in particular, on its forests as wood was cut for curing leaf.

In part, the MOU will require farmers to use coal for curing their tobacco or to establish a woodlot as a curing resource.

Meanwhile, Hurungwe District Administrator Tsana Chirau said that though contractors were raking in huge profits, they were not forthcoming in fulfilling their corporate social obligations.

She said that despite the fact that farmers were exposed to dangerous chemicals, contractors had not come up with programs to assist the area’s clinics, some of which were facing drugs and equipment shortages.

According to the Herald, the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board puts the number of registered tobacco growers in Hurungwe at more than 22,000.

A leaf tobacco processing factory has been the subject of protests in the Saptibari village of the Aditmari subdistrict of Bangladesh because of its proximity to educational institutions, according to a story in The Daily Star.

Factory and local sources were quoted as saying that though the Mian Leaf tobacco factory was built in 2012, it was not used to process tobacco last year because of protests by schoolchildren, teachers and other local people.

However, the factory’s owner is said to have decided to run the factory this year following the tobacco harvest.

The Star said the heads of three educational institutions close to the factory believed the health of their 1,500 students would be put at risk if the tobacco factory became operational, though the nature of the health risk was not specified.

A top official of Vietnam’s tobacco industry has proposed boosting the country’s revenue by urgently cracking down on cigarette smuggling rather than by increasing tobacco-products consumption tax, according to a VietnamPlus story.

Vu Van Cuong, the chairman of both the Vietnam Tobacco Association and the state-owned Vietnam National Tobacco Corp, made the suggestion after the Ministry of Finance unveiled a plan to raise the consumption tax on cigarettes to 75 percent by July 2015 and to 85 percent by 2018, as part of draft amendments to the Law on Special Consumption Tax.

He said a consumption tax hike would pave the way for more smuggling, the reduction of the domestic tobacco industry’s market share and the lowering of state revenues.

VietnamPlus reported that a 2012 survey by the International Tax and Investment Centre, which is part funded by multinational tobacco companies, showed that Vietnam was the second largest consumer of smuggled cigarettes among 11 surveyed Asian nations.

Logic Technology said yesterday that it had strengthened its No. 2 position in respect of e-cigarette volume sales, according to a Wells Fargo Securities report on Nielsen’s C-Track [U.S. convenience store] Database.

Logic said also that it had maintained its No. 2 position in respect of e-cigarette dollar sales in convenience stores.

“Logic now commands 20.2 percent of dollar share in the category, demonstrating the continued success of Logic’s premium product line,” the company said.

“Further, Logic has maintained the No. 2 unit share position, increasing to 21.8 percent of the category.”

The Nielsen report showed also that Logic had three of the top five SKUs nationwide.

Lorillard’s Blu remains the e-cigarette category leader.

Overall, Wells Fargo reported that the growth in the value of e-cigarette sales had decelerated slightly to plus 31.3 percent.

Reynolds American Inc. is rumoured to be considering making a bid for Lorillard, according to research notes issued by Wells Fargo Securities and based on a story yesterday in The Financial Times.

Neither Reynolds nor Lorillard have commented on the story.

Bonnie Herzog, managing director, beverage, tobacco and convenience store research at Wells Fargo, said that such an acquisition could produce considerable synergies and cost savings in respect of manufacturing, employment and e-vapor product development, given that certain conditions pertained.

Herzog said that a combined RAI and Lorillard would be an attractive strategic partner for British American Tobacco, which owns 42 percent of the equity in RAI.

And she said she expected that such an acquisition would be accepted by competition authorities, though perhaps on condition that some brands were divested.

Nevertheless, Herzog did express surprise at the timing of the move given the current lack of clarity over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s potential menthol regulation.

Twenty-six of the U.S.’s leading public health and medical organizations have issued an open letter calling on all retailers to follow the example of CVS Caremark and end the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products, according to a PRNewswire story.

CVS announced earlier in February that by Oct. 1 it would stop selling tobacco products at its more than 7,600 stores throughout the U.S.

“CVS Caremark is absolutely right: The sale of tobacco products—the number one cause of preventable death and disease—is fundamentally inconsistent with a commitment to improving health,” said the open letter addressed to U.S. retailers, “especially those with pharmacies.”

The Philippines Senate yesterday started deliberations on a bill that, if passed, would require graphic health warnings to be included on tobacco packs, according to a story on GMA News Online.

In his sponsorship speech, Senate President Franklin Drilon said the graphic health warning bill was of “vital importance” because of the rising number of Filipino cigarette smokers.

“The bill is necessary in order to strengthen the government’s efforts to discourage smoking among our citizenry,” he said. “Smokers have to be informed and made fully aware of what will happen to their health every time they pick up a cigarette pack.”

The Philippines is a signatory to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which obliges countries that have ratified the treaty to pass laws requiring graphic health warnings on cigarette packs.

But so far, the Philippines has not passed any laws on graphic warnings, and the House version of the bill now before the Senate is still only at the committee level.

The GMA story said that the Department of Health had issued in 2010 an order requiring graphic health warnings on cigarette packs, but that tobacco companies had challenged the move in court and obtained a temporary restraining order.