Author: Staff Writer

Imperial Tobacco employees in the FYR of Macedonia recently gave up their weekend to take part in a community volunteering event in Skopje aimed at improving the quality of life for some of the city’s most vulnerable young adults.

The event formed part of a joint project with the Altadis Foundation and a local charity.

Volunteers were involved in a range of activities such as clearing rubbish, planting shrubs and refurbishing and furnishing apartments.

The beneficiaries of the Create a Better Future project were disadvantaged young people who had left state-run orphanages at the age of 18.

“This was a great event, which involved volunteers from both our trading and manufacturing divisions in Macedonia,” said Inna Napolskaya, finance director, Southern Balkans.

“We were very touched by the young people’s appreciation of our efforts, and we’re planning further activities in the near future to demonstrate our responsibility in action.”

The French e-cigarette company Nhoss expects to more than double its turnover next year to over €20 million.

In a press note issued yesterday, the company’s rise was described as “extraordinary.”

Started in 2010, the company, which produces its own e-liquid, had a turnover of €150,000 during 2011; a figure that will have risen to about €10 million by the end of this year.

It has sold more than 2 million products since its launch; its workforce has gone from four in 2010 to 35 this year; and its brand is now present in 7,000 points of sale in France.

Nhoss has expanded into Spain and expects its products to be on sale in Italy and Portugal before the end of this year.

The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) is expected to try to ease Bulgaria’s tobacco smoking ban in enclosed public places in time for New Year celebrations, according to a Novinite story quoting the Bulgarian Trud (labor) daily.

Amendments to the country’s Health Act are due to be voted on in parliament in December, just before the start of the holidays, during which many hospitality-sector establishments expect to enjoy high turnovers.

“Right after we adopt the state budget, we will move the Health Act on the agenda and ease the ban around New Year,” said Spas Panchev, deputy chair of the BSP’s parliamentary group and one of the strongest proponents of easing smoking regulations.

The easing of restrictions would see the establishment of designated, separate smoking and nonsmoking areas in large restaurants and coffee shops, while the owners of smaller establishments, with floor areas of less than 70 square meters, would be able to decide whether their establishments should or should not allow smoking. Smoking would be allowed in bars and nightclubs.

However, it is by no means certain that those wanting to ease the current ban will carry the day because there is a lot of opposition to what they are attempting.

British American Tobacco is offering a version of one of its leading brands of cigarettes that provides details of the geographical source and harvest year of the leaf tobacco used in its manufacture, according to a This is Money story.

The story doesn’t mention the brand but a picture suggests that it is Dunhill.

Naming the sources of the main ingredients of products has long been used as a marketing tool by the manufacturers of everything from wine to chocolates, but it has been used only sparingly in the case of tobacco products.

According to the story, the new product from BAT will retail at £18 for a pack of 20—double the retail price of most cigarettes.

Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of the U.S. city of Chicago, is trying to raise awareness about the danger of smoking menthol-flavored tobacco by using a new publicity campaign.

According to a story by Lewis Lazare for The Business Journals, the campaign has been put together by the Chicago Department of Public Health in conjunction with the LimeGreen/Chicago advertising agency.

The Don’t Get Burned campaign is part of the department’s Healthy Chicago effort that Emanuel is emphasizing.

The target audience for the new campaign—which includes television, radio and print—comprises young people the tobacco industry is said to be wooing with menthol-flavored tobacco products.

The print campaign features close-ups of the faces of young people on whom are scarred the words Big Tobacco. The copy reads: “Tobacco companies use menthol-flavored cigarettes to get you addicted. Don’t get burned.”

The city of Chicago maintains that menthol cigarettes cause more young people to take up smoking and then make it harder for them to quit.

Australia’s standardized tobacco-packaging rules are a sticking point in talks over a new free trade agreement with the U.S. and other Pacific nations, according to a story by Chris Pash for Business Insider.

An intellectual-property business delegation representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which was in Australia last week, is said to view the removal, by law, of company brands as “strange.”

The representatives were said to understand the health benefits associated with standardized tobacco packaging but were of the opinion that a company’s brand was highly valuable and in some cases the majority of a business’s value.

This was an issue that needed to be solved in order to get closer to the U.S.-sponsored free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Last month, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised the possibility of a deal within three months.

Mark Elliot, executive vice president of the Global Intellectual Property Center, part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the delegation was keen to have a conversation with the Australian government.

“There are some areas of disagreement with the former government [the Labor government that brought in standardized packaging], and the new government is still working through those issues,” he said.

If the price of cigarettes in South Korea were to be increased to almost four times the current level, even financially well-off smokers might be prompted to quit, according to a story in The Korea Times.

According to a survey of 800 smokers carried out by the Korea Health and Social Affairs organization, a price of WON8,943 per pack of cigarettes is the tipping point at which most smokers would start to think seriously about quitting. The current average price of a pack of cigarettes is about WON2,500.

That threshold varies according to smokers’ incomes, with those in the bottom 25 percent income bracket saying WON8,497 per pack would prompt a lifestyle change, and those in the top 25 percent saying WON9,660 per pack would be too much to pay.

The American Legacy Foundation has suffered a “diversion” of funds estimated at $3.4 million, according to a story in The Washington Post, which has turned the spotlight on some of the U.S.’s nonprofit organizations.

Legacy was founded as a nonprofit organization in 1999 out of the funds raised by the Master Settlement Agreement that resolved health claims brought against U.S. cigarette companies.

The foundation declared on a 2011 federal disclosure form that it had become aware of a diversion in excess of $250,000 committed by a former employee.

It disclosed that the diversion was due to fraud and now says it believes it fulfilled its disclosure requirement.

But the Post story said that records and interviews revealed that Legacy had suffered an estimated $3.4 million loss linked to purchases from a business described sometimes as a computer supply firm and at others as a barbershop, and to a former assistant vice president.

The Post said too that the disclosure report had not given details about how Legacy officials waited nearly three years after an initial warning before they called in investigators.

“We’re not innocent in this,” said Legacy Chief Executive Cheryl Healton, who, in fiscal 2012, received a “compensation package” worth $729,000. “We are horrified it happened on our watch. . . . The truth hurts—we screwed up.”

With $50 million in annual expenditures and $1 billion in assets, Legacy is perhaps best known for its edgy, anti-tobacco advertising campaign known as Truth.

The full story is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/inside-the-hidden-world-of-thefts-scams-and-phantom-purchases-at-the-nations-nonprofits/2013/10/26/825a82ca-0c26-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html.

London-listed Imperial Tobacco shares fell by 63p, or 2.6 percent, to £23.67, and British American Tobacco shares dropped by 79p, or 2.4 percent, to £32.81 after PMI said it planned to enter the e-cigarette market in the second half of next year and would bring forward the launch of another reduced-risk alternative to traditional cigarettes that heats, rather than burns, tobacco.

BAT already offers e-cigarettes, and Imperial plans to launch two battery-powered products next year to tap into a market that generates about $2 billion in global sales.

But analysts at Citigroup said PMI’s plan to spend $100 million to accelerate the rollout of its next generation of products and its intention to increase its marketing investment in traditional cigarettes were likely to present the two British companies with “tougher competition.”

But PMI suffered too. Writing for Bloomberg News on Thursday, Cotten Timberlake said PMI had “extended its decline into a second day, falling the most in five months after a crimped profit outlook prompted Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to cut its rating on the shares to neutral.”

“The stock fell by 3 percent to $86.60 at the close in New York for the steepest drop since June 20.”