Category: News This Week

Molins’ Tobacco Machinery division sales during the six months to the end of June, at £18.0 million, were increased by 22 percent on those of the six months to the end of June 2012. At the same time, the division’s operating profit increased from £0.8 million to £1.3 million.

In reporting its first-half results, Molins said that sales of new and rebuilt tobacco machines were supported by a strong opening order book, and that while order intake overall was slightly weaker than in the same period last year, current order prospects were relatively strong.

The division is continuing to focus on new product development and improvements in service performance.

Meanwhile, sales by the company’s Scientific Services division, at £11.4 million, were up by 23 percent, while operating profit was £0.1 million, compared with an £0.1 million loss during the first six months of 2012.

The division, with its main facilities in the U.K. and U.S., comprises Arista Laboratories, an independent tobacco and smoke constituent analytical laboratory, and Cerulean, which supplies process and quality-control instruments to the tobacco industry, as well as other instruments and machinery to other industrial sectors.

Molins reported that order intake at Cerulean had been strong in most areas, with the key Chinese market remaining buoyant and its order book being boosted by a large, one-off project for a customer in North Africa.

Order intake at Arista Laboratories was lower than in the same period last year. Although it had been expected that regulatory requirements for the testing and reporting of tobacco product constituents in the U.S. would have been confirmed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the first half of the year, the regulatory framework had not been forthcoming, and the latest indication from the FDA was that guidance would be published in December, Molins said.

At the same time, sales by Molins’ Packaging Machinery division increased by 16 percent to £18.4 million, while operating profit was unchanged at £0.1 million.

“The increase in sales in the first half was supported by a strong opening order book, although margins were reduced as a result of an increase in high-engineering-content projects, with a lower proportion of sales of standardized machines,” Molins reported.

“The group has had a strong first half, with increases in both sales and underlying profit,” said Chief Executive Dick Hunter.

“We have continued our investment across the business, most notably in product development, as well as through the expansion of our Packaging Machinery presence in Asia.

“The order book supports the group’s full-year trading performance being second-half weighted as in previous years.

“The board’s expectation of performance for the full year remains unchanged.”

Hungary’s government is planning to ban tobacco sales in large retail spaces, according to an All Hungary Media Group report quoting a Magyar Hirlap story citing an unnamed government source.

Under the proposal, current legislation would be amended to prohibit tobacco shops from operating in retail spaces larger than 2,500 square meters.

Retail tobacco sales became a state monopoly in Hungary in July, partly because the licensing process this involved was seen as making it easier to prevent minors gaining access to tobacco products.

But some retailers are said to have moved into hypermarkets and shopping malls that tend to attract young people.

The government is said also to be considering a ban on tobacconists operating within 100 meters of schools.

Any changes are expected to come into force in January.

The Gallaher Group subsidiary of Japan Tobacco International (JTI) made misleading claims about standardized tobacco packaging, according to a Cancer Research UK (CRUK) statement quoting a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

CRUK said the ruling represented the third time this year that the ASA had upheld a complaint against JTI over unsubstantiated and misleading claims regarding standardized cigarette packaging.

As a result of the ruling, which was made in response to objections by CRUK, the offending regional press “advertisements” cannot appear again in their current form.

Under the advertisement headline, “How do you spot a fake pack of cigarettes?” the company said that “19 percent of independent shopkeepers in London were considering closure as a direct result of the illegal tobacco trade.”

“The claim made no mention of the effects of ‘cross-border shopping’ on trade—people legitimately buying tobacco overseas for consumption in the U.K.—and was based on results from a survey of members belonging to a group funded by the tobacco industry, not shopkeepers as a whole,” CRUK said.

The U.K. government has dropped the question of standardized tobacco packaging, at least for the time being, but EU Commission proposals, due to be voted on next month, could introduce a form of standardized packaging by the back door.

The full story is at http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/news/archive/cancernews/2013-08-29-Third-advert-from-Japan-Tobacco-International-ruled-misleading.

It is generally known that most smokers who quit their habit put on weight.

What is less well known is that about 80 percent of quitters put on an average of 7 kg each.

And what might come as a surprise to some people is that this weight increase occurs even if the quitters’ calorific intake remains the same as or even falls from the level before quitting.

According to a Medical Xpress story, researchers working with Gerhard Rogler of Zurich University Hospital attribute the cause of the weight gain to a changed composition of the bacterial diversity in the intestine.

“As they recently showed in PLoS One, the bacterial strains that also prevail in the intestinal flora of obese people take the upper hand in people giving up smoking,” the story said.

The full story is at http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-08-smokers-gain-weight.html.

Japan Tobacco Inc. is due shortly to launch three additions to its Mevius Premium Menthol range of products that will each include a ‘spread filter’.

Described as JT’s unique new menthol dispersion filter, the spread filter is said to deliver a ‘3D menthol sensation’.

The new filter has laser-created holes at its end that are designed to disperse the airflow and so provide a wider delivery of menthol not previously experienced.

The three additions to the 100 per cent natural menthol Mevius Premium Menthol range are Mevius Premium Menthol Spread One 100’s, Mevius Premium Menthol Spread 5, and Mevius Premium Menthol Spread 8.

These three products are due to rolled out across Japan in early October.

Oral products containing tobacco and ingredients deemed to be ‘food’ are to remain on the banned list in the Indian state of Punjab, according to a story in the most recent issue of the BBM Bommidala newsletter.

Punjab’s chief minister, Parkash Singh Badal, has approved a proposal by the State Health and Family Welfare Department to extend the regulation banning the production, storage, distribution and sale of gutkha and pan masala for a further year.

Oral products containing tobacco and food ingredients are sold under a profusion of names in India; so the state has also banned ‘other products containing tobacco or nicotine as ingredients by whatsoever name [they are] available in the market’, though presumably not potatoes and tomatoes.

The original notification of the ban was issued on September 5, 2012, and was due to expire on September 9, 2013.

A patient at the StateHospital at Carstairs, Scotland, has won a court ruling that a ban on his smoking at the facility was unlawful and was a breach of his rights, according to a BBC Online story.

The man, who has been detained at the high-security psychiatric hospital for 18 years, challenged the ban, which was introduced in December 2011, at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

Judge Lord Stewart said the decision to compel the man “to stop smoking was flawed in every possible way”.

He said he wanted to make it clear that he was not endorsing the idea of a human right to smoke, because there was no right to smoke in a legal sense. But he said he was prepared to make a restricted declaration that the policy was unlawful as it affected the patient, and that it was a breach of his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Scotland does not have legislation in place that bans smoking in such hospitals and the judge said that if the legislature would not support a measure it was wrong to enforce it by extra-statutory means. “It may be of course, given the experience at the StateHospital, that the time is now right to try and put the ban on a statutory footing,” he added.

The judge said he had decided it would be wrong to strike down the board’s decision to go smoke-free and that the orders he would make would allow the patient’s case to be reconsidered by the hospital authorities.

The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has warned the Super League club, Beşiktaş that it will fine coach Slaven Bilic if he again smokes inside a stadium during a soccer game, according to a Hurriyet story.

The TFF told the club Bilic had been found smoking a cigarette inside a stadium despite a no-smoking ban.

It said the coach would be fined if he committed a second offense.

Photographs of Bilic apparently smoking while watching a Galatasaray vs. Gaziantepspor game at the Türk Telekom Arena in Istanbul caused controversy when they were spread on social media last week.

Philip Morris International is due to host a live audio webcast at www.pmi.com/webcasts of the company’s remarks and question-and-answer session by CFO, Jacek Olczak, during the Barclays Capital Back-To-School Consumer Conference on September 4, starting about 10.30 hours Eastern Time.

The webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, will cover the entire PMI session.

An archived copy of the webcast will be available at www.pmi.com/webcasts until 17.00 hours on October 3.

The presentation slides and script will be available at www.pmi.com/presentations.