Author: Staff Writer

Iggesund Paperboard is launching an e-commerce system in the U.S. for the direct sale of Invercote board with payment by credit card and distribution via courier.

The system caters for companies across the U.S. involved in developing test packaging and mock-ups using digital printing.

“The digital market involves only a small number of standard sheet sizes, and we can undoubtedly provide good service to this market throughout the country,” said the president of Iggesund Paperboard in the U.S., Rickard Österlindh, who is responsible also for global strategy in the digital printing segment.

“Most American paper merchants are less focused on digital print markets than they are on traditional offset print markets, and their distribution models are not set up to service what can often times be very small volumes. The e-commerce solution is intended to enable Iggesund to capture these smaller volume opportunities, of which there are many. In this respect, we believe our new service will be a success.”

In a press note, Iggesund said that digital printing was advancing in leaps and bounds, and that marketers were beginning to grasp the power of its applications.

“The quality of print reproduction associated with digital printing has improved substantially, and with that, end users are increasingly turning to variable data, which allows each printed piece to be individually customized, to increase the ROI for their marketing and advertising spend,” the note said.

“In addition, technological progress is enabling the presses to handle formats and thicknesses that make the presses better and better suited to packaging production.”

Altria Group is due to host a live audio webcast at altria.com from 9 a.m. Eastern Time on July 23 to discuss its 2013 second-quarter business results, which will have been issued about 7 a.m. on the same day.

During the webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, chairman and CEO Marty Barrington and executive vice president and CFO Howard Willard will discuss the results and answer questions from the investment community and news media.

Pre-event registration is necessary at altria.com, where an archived copy of the webcast will be made available.

A group of vapers has written an open letter to the chairman of the European Parliament’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, Matthias Groote, calling for a rethink on the European Commission’s proposal for regulating electronic cigarettes.

The committee is due to vote tomorrow on the totality of the commission’s proposals for revising the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), which include the electronic cigarette proposal.

The group says that for 5 million to 7 million people within the EU, electronic cigarettes have and continue to provide a viable alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes.

And it asked Groote and his committee to imagine how many lives could be saved if electronic cigarettes were allowed to continue to flourish.

However, the group expressed concern that what it called this positive story was about to come to an abrupt halt because of the commission’s proposals to amend the TPD. Under these proposals, electronic cigarettes could be placed on the market only if they were authorized pursuant to the Medicinal Products Directive. “By regulating e-cigarettes as a medicinal product, and by banning flavours, the Commission and its supporters in Parliament and Council are effectively banning e-cigarettes, as the Parliament’s own Legal Affairs Committee has made clear,” it said.

The group made the point that whereas electronic cigarettes were safe, tobacco cigarettes killed 700,000 people in the EU each year and neither the commission nor Parliament were proposing to ban them.

“The key health benefit of e-cigarettes is determined by how many smokers switch to them or use them as a staging post to quitting completely,” the group said in its letter. “It is therefore vital that e-cigarettes continue to be regulated as a consumer product. Many of us have tried numerous times to quit smoking using conventional nicotine replacement therapies and have failed; however, with e-cigarettes we have all cut down our smoking or stopped completely. Without anyone in the professional public health field doing anything and without spending any public money, smokers like us have been quitting, switching and cutting down through the use of e-cigarettes. This is something that should be celebrated, not a cause for concern.”

The group posed the following question to the committee: “Why would the EU want to intervene to prevent or obstruct a smoker having access to products that could potentially save his or her life?”

And it followed up that question with another: “Do MEPs really want to protect an industry that kills 700,000 people at the expense of a market-based, consumer-led public health revolution that has the potential to save millions of lives?”

The group urged the committee to reject the electronic cigarettes proposal.

“We believe it is poorly thought through, contains an arbitrary and pointless threshold, takes an easy shortcut by applying medicines regulation rather than designing appropriate regulation, and has been prepared without proper consultation of the industry and users like us,” the group said. “Members of your committee should insist that the Commission starts again and does a thorough job, looking properly at all the regulatory options and only once it has done the necessary work, bring forward proposals.

“In the meantime, Member States should enforce the existing legislation properly and report on what they are doing.

“For the sake of 7 million e-cigarette users and the millions of potential e-cigarette users, we urge you to do the right thing.”

The letter can be read in full at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/152389430/Open-Letter-From-Electronic-Cigarette-Users-From-Across-the-European-Union.

British American Tobacco is planning to spend about $50 million over five years building a tobacco manufacturing plant in Myanmar, where it was forced to leave 10 years ago.

The company said yesterday it had completed a joint venture agreement in Myanmar with I.M.U. Enterprise Ltd. (IMU) to manufacture, distribute and market BAT’s brands for the domestic market.

IMU is said to be part of the leading local conglomerate, Sein Wut Hmon Group, which has an extensive fast-moving consumer goods distribution network throughout the country.

The Myanmar Investment Commission approved the joint venture foreign investment in January.

“Under the terms of the agreement, British American Tobacco will have majority share in the joint venture company, British American Tobacco Myanmar Ltd.,” BAT said in a note posted on its website. “The company plans to invest approximately US$50 million over five years to establish a world-class manufacturing facility that will produce London, an iconic brand of international prestige and quality.”

“Historically, British American Tobacco had a market-leading position in Myanmar, which we are aiming to rebuild with our partner,” Rehan Baig, the managing director of British American Tobacco Myanmar Ltd., was quoted as saying. “The country has strong opportunities for growth, and, with the re-entry, we are very keen to offer consumers an attractive range of international-quality products and brands through responsible marketing. The joint venture gives us a very sustainable and long-term position in this growing economy.

“This signifies much more than a shared responsibility for the production of our international brands. It is a long-term commitment to develop local talent in technical know-how and management capabilities whilst also creating more employment opportunities. We will employ approximately 400 people to begin with, and we also intend [to] collaborate with local farmers to improve their yield and quality of local tobacco.”

Meanwhile, BAT’s CEO, Nicandro Durante, said his company was truly excited with the post-sanctions development in Myanmar and was keen to play a part in the country’s economic and social advancement. “Our ability to build strong positions in emerging markets such as Myanmar is one of our key strengths as … one of the largest international tobacco companies in the world,” he added.

The average price paid for the first 129.28 million kg of flue-cured tobacco auctioned in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh this year, RS122.51 per kg, was more than 24 percent up on that of the average price earned at the same stage of the previous sales season, RS98.67 per kg, according to a story in the latest issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter quoting figures from the Tobacco Board of India.

Andhra is believed to have produced about 167 million kg this year.

With 129.28 million kg sold, the top price for Andhra leaf stood at RS197.20, which was paid for northern light-soil tobacco.

Five auction platforms in the northern light-soil tobacco had accounted also for the highest average price, RS150.41 per kg.

This year’s TFWA World Exhibition conference will have as one of its speakers Lord Sebastian Coe, Olympic gold-medalist and British Olympic Association chairman.

The conference, themed “A brand new challenge,” will run alongside the Exhibition in Cannes, France, on Oct. 20-25.

It will be addressed, too, by Willie Walsh, CEO of International Airlines Group, and author, social strategist and consultant John Gerzema.

More details are available at tfwa.com.

The European Commission has been asked how it can be in favor of maintaining cooperation between the EU and tobacco companies when the latter seem to be indifferent to the fate of animals.

The animals in this instance are non-human animals, particularly the rats, monkeys and dogs that mostly are used in testing tobacco products and the smoke produced by them.

In a preamble to three written questions to the commission, Polish member of the European Parliament Jarosław Leszek Wałęsa said that whereas tests involving exposing animals to tobacco smoke “for many years under atrocious conditions” were prohibited in the EU, there were no such restrictions in respect of tobacco products imported into the EU by “the well-known manufacturers which carry out these tests.”

The MEP said there was no point in carrying out research in this way because it had already been proved beyond doubt that smoking was harmful.

In addition, he said, non-human animals reacted differently than did humans to toxins, and, in any case, laboratory animals were not exposed to tobacco smoke in the same way as people were exposed to it.

In all, he asked three questions:

1. How does the commission intend to promote EU practices outside its borders in such a way as to influence the actions of tobacco groups and producers?

2. Does the commission intend to block imports of tobacco products tested on animals?

3. How can the commission argue in favour of maintaining the European Union’s cooperation with tobacco companies when the above proves them to be indifferent to the fate of animals?

The latest attempt to find a nicotine vaccine has come up with a system that uses self-assembling DNA nanoparticles to make a person’s immune system into a”high-precision, super-powerful, nicotine-zapping machine,” according to a piece by Robert Sorokanich for Gizmodo, quoting research by Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute.

Yung Chang, who leads the research team, was quoted as saying that the DNA nanostructure enabled rational design and construction of synthetic vaccines because of its precision control over the placement of various antigenic components. “This approach may offer a new strategy to improve the efficacy of many different vaccines,” he added.

Sorokanich posited that while clinical testing was still down the road, once nicotine, alcohol and cocaine vaccines became a reality, a person could be fully immune to bad decisions.

His report is at http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/07/self-assembling-dna-could-make-you-immune-to-cigarettes/.

The Chinese company Midriver Enterprises is expected to contract nearly 80,000 Zimbabwean farmers to produce tobacco during the 2013-2014 season, according to a story in the Zimbabwe Herald.

And because some farmers have been facing financial problems, the company will offer to supply them with inputs and working capital to pay wages. The company will supply also coal for curing so as to reduce deforestation and promote sustainable practices.

Midriver’s production manager, Johannes Muchimika, said that most farmers had not been producing high-quality crops because they had had limited inputs. Farmers would apply inadequate amounts of fertilizers because of financial constraints, he added.

In addition, Muchimika said, some farmers had faced difficulties paying workers, especially for reaping and curing, a situation that had resulted in huge losses.

Midriver, which will buy the crop from the contracted farmers, says it will provide the inputs at reasonable prices to farmers since it would be buying them directly from the manufacturers.

Health groups have blasted a bid by James Packer’s Crown Ltd. to allow smoking across the entire gaming floor of its proposed Sydney casino, an area that could be as large as two and a half rugby league fields, according to a story in The Sydney Morning Herald.

The NSW Cancer Council’s manager of tobacco control, Scot Walsberger, said the organization was “disappointed” in the NSW government’s conditional approval of the proposal and said potential employees would have to choose “between a job at the casino and their health.”

Crown’s proposal, conditionally accepted by NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell on Thursday, described allowing smoking in the gaming area as “absolutely critical.”

The company has proposed a 24-hour-a-day gaming area of up to 20,000 square metres.

Crown’s Sydney rival, The Star, enjoys a similar exemption from NSW laws in its high roller areas, and Crown’s Melbourne high-roller area, the Mahogany Room, is exempt from Victorian anti-smoking laws.

Quit Victoria Executive Director Fiona Sharkie said the move was “extremely concerning” and accused Crown of “putting profit before the health of their staff and consumers.”