Category: News This Week

Cigarette prices are due to rise next month, and again in October, according to a SeeNews France story.

French health minister, Marisol Touraine, said last week that cigarette prices would increase from July 1 as part of an anti-smoking campaign launched in May this year.

Touraine said an increase was agreed at the end of 2012 as part of a law on social security financing.

This increase would be made in two steps, with EU0.20 being added to the price of a pack of cigarettes in July and another, unspecified rise being made in October.

Imperial Tobacco has pledged its support for skills and training projects for jobseekers in the Cantabria region of northern Spain.

The ‘Conduce tu futuro’ (drive your future) course is designed to help people find commercial driving jobs.

Those taking part get lessons to help them gain a commercial vehicle driving licence as well as support in finding work, including CV preparation and interview techniques.

This is the fifth year that the Altadis Foundation has agreed to support the driving course in Santander – home to its Cantabria cigar factory.

In addition, the Madrid-based foundation is helping to provide skills training for vulnerable adults at a social centre in the city.

“In the current economic environment in Spain it’s vital to provide more opportunities for people to find work,” said Ines Cassin, the foundation’s general manager. “These are both pioneering projects which we’re delighted to support.”

TerraCycle, supported by Imperial Tobacco Canada, is planning this year to collect and recycle more than 10 million used cigarette filters this year, according to a Canada Newswire story.

TerraCycle and Imperial partnered last year in an innovative program to recycle the butts, inner foil, outer wrap, unused tobacco, ashes and other elements that comprise cigarette waste.

As a result, close to 50,000 people and more than one hundred organizations banded together to recycle more than five million cigarette filters during what was the first year of the program.

“Several years ago, in the spirit of our vision of eliminating the very idea of garbage, we set our sights on tackling cigarette waste,” Tom Szaky, the entrepreneur who launched TerraCycle in 2001, was quoted as saying.

“Cigarettes butts are one of the planet’s most ubiquitous waste streams. We are delighted that Imperial Tobacco Canada and its employees shared our dream to provide Canadians with an alternative to cigarette waste.

“With such a successful first year under our belts, we’re urging all Canadians to consider joining us in 2013.”

The program aims to incentivize Canadians by offering money for each pound of cigarette waste collected – money that can be directed to registered charities.

Cigarette filters and packaging are recycled into various plastic products for industrial use, such as the manufacture of plastic pallets, while the ash, paper and tobacco are composted according to industry guidelines.

About 43 per cent of smokers in the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq are males aged from 15 to 25, according to a story by Salih Waladbagi for the Kurdish Globe, quoting figures from a survey conducted by the Zhian Health Organization (ZHO).

The survey found, too, that about 18 per cent of the women in the region were smokers, as were 32 per cent of doctors.

About 36 per cent of ‘young men’ were shisha smokers.

Kurdistan’s parliament ratified in 2008 a prohibition on smoking in public places, but the ban is apparently not strictly enforced.

The law sought also to require the inclusion of Kurdish-language health warnings on cigarette packs, but this requirement has not been ratified as yet; so cigarettes without such health warnings continue to be imported.

E-Cig Cavern (E-CC) is supporting the decision by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to regulate all nicotine-containing products.

In a press note issued through PRNewswire, the company said it strongly supported greater controls on the production and sale of electronic cigarettes, some of which were produced in factories where health and safety standards were ‘severely lacking’.

And it described as significant the MHRA’s decision not to pull electronic cigarettes from the shelves: a decision that supported the argument that electronic cigarettes, when manufactured, sold, and used correctly, did not pose a threat to the general public.

But E-CC’s support is not without misgivings because of the MHRA’s links to the pharmaceutical industry and, through it, to what it describes as ‘ineffective’ nicotine replacement products.

E-CC said that it sold only e-liquid that was manufactured in Europe and that met all EU safety standards.

It said, too, that it was laying the groundwork for its products to obtain a full medical license.

A number of e-cigarette companies have come out in favor of the regulation of electronic cigarettes as over-the-counter medicines, though a number are still reading the fine print.

The Philippines-based LT Group is to look to its core businesses of tobacco and liquor for further growth, according to a story in The Philippine Star.

“We will focus on our core business and fully capitalize on our market leadership position to benefit from the strong demand in growth in consumer-focused businesses,” the group’s president, Michael G. Tan, told reporters yesterday.

Non-core businesses, such as Philippines Airlines, would end up on the selling block, he added.

Not that everything in the tobacco business is as Tan would like it, according to a story in the Inquirer.

Next to oil smuggling, the illicit trade of cigarettes had become a key concern of the Philippines, with the government set to lose a potential revenue of P8 billion this year, he said.

Speaking yesterday to reporters after the annual stockholders meeting of LTG, Tan said the underground domestic manufacturing of cigarettes and the smuggling of products from abroad had been fueling the illegal trade in cigarettes.

And in other Asian countries, he added, the illegal tobacco trade had grown to “astronomical proportions”.
LTG is a key partner in the country’s leading cigarette-maker Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Corp.

The Irish Presidency of the EU says that its revised version of the European Commission’s proposed Tobacco Products Directive is ‘a balanced compromise that should be agreeable to the majority of the member states’.

The Presidency is proposing a reduction in the combined picture and text warnings for cigarettes, roll-your-own and water pipe tobacco from 75 per cent to 70 per cent on the front and back surfaces of packs.

Under the proposals, member states would decide whether or not to apply these warnings to other smoking tobacco products.

In a move that will greatly please tobacco manufacturers, the Presidency is proposing that slim cigarettes should not be banned, as they would be under the Commission’s proposals, which were made public at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, the Presidency has sought to clarify the position on flavors while keeping the thrust of the Commission’s proposal. Additives essential for the production process (e.g. sugar lost during the curing process) would not be prohibited, while those that result in a characterising flavour or increase addictiveness and toxicity would be prohibited. Tobacco products other than cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco and chewing tobacco would be exempted from the flavor prohibitions.

However, under the new proposals, member states would be able to introduce stricter national measures in certain areas, such as additives or certain aspects of labelling when these were justified for public health reasons.

Discussion of the Presidency’s proposals will take place during the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council meeting on Friday.

The Norwegian Heart and Lung Patient Organization, LHL, has called for Norway to become tobacco-smoke free, according to a story in The Nordic Page.

LHL’s secretary general, Frode Jahren, was quoted as saying that now was the time to face up to the fact that smoking killed, and so prohibit the sale and importation of tobacco and cigarettes.

The Nordic Page story said that tobacco smoking was the major risk factor for both early death and loss of healthy-life years in Norway.

Estimates from the National Institute of Public Health showed that each year about 5,100 people died from smoking related diseases. And ‘hundreds’ of people died each year from diseases caused by passive smoking.

The story went on to claim that tobacco had no health benefits: it was simply a poison that killed.

Although the number of smokers had decreased in Norway significantly since 1973, daily or occasional smoking was said still to be common among more than a million Norwegians aged 16-74.

While conceding that the fight against smoking had yielded significant results, Jahren said the situation called out for stronger measures than had been employed in the past.

And based on the available knowledge, prohibition was the only logical answer.

The introduction of a sales and importation ban held out the prospect of significant health benefits for individuals and economic benefits for society, Jahren added.

The prevalence of tobacco smoking in the US fell from 18.9 per cent in 2011 to 18.0 per cent in 2012, according to estimates based on data from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey and previous surveys.

Smoking fell from 24.7 per cent in 1997 to 20.9 per cent in 2005, and from 20.6 per cent in 2009 to 18.0 per cent in 2012.

Last year, 20.4 per cent of men and 15.8 per cent of women were current smokers, while 25.3 per cent of men and 19.1 per cent of women were former smokers.

At the same time, the number of men and women who had never smoked stood at 54.3 per cent and 65.2 per cent respectively.

Taking men and women together, smoking was most common among those aged 18-44 (20.3 per cent), while the smoking prevalence among those 45-64 was 19.5 per cent and the prevalence among those over 65 was 8.9 per cent.

For adults aged 18 and over, and for the age groups 18–44 and 65 and over, men were more likely than women to be current smokers.

Alliance One International’s sales and other operating revenues during the year to the end of March, at $2,243.8 million, were increased by 4.3 per cent on those of the previous year.

Tobacco sales were up by $94.1 million, primarily due to higher green costs caused by smaller crops in African countries and Brazil in respect of the fiscal 2013 crop.

At the same time, processing and other revenues decreased 1.1 per cent to $95.1 million due to a smaller crop in Brazil.

Gross profit decreased by 0.9 per cent to $285.2 million and gross profit as a percentage of sales decreased from 13.4 per cent to 12.7 per cent mainly due to higher per-kg processing costs incurred because of the smaller African crops – higher costs that were not fully passed on to the customer.

Gross profit and core operating results were impacted, too, by $14.3 million of foreign exchange hedge expenses, which compared with a $6.0 million gain last year.

Commenting on the results, Pieter Sikkel, CEO and president, said the company was encouraged by its sales improvements this year.

However, he added, there remained significant opportunities to improve the company’s performance and there were further objectives to meet as part of its reaching its goals.

“Strategic investment remains a primary focus and this year we deployed $39.9 million to further improve factory efficiencies and enhance our supply chain,” he said. “Investment in farmer agronomy programs, which support secure compliant sustainable supply as embraced by our customers, continues to be a key component of our plans.

“Total demand for tobacco, while shifting, is stable and supply remains tight in Burley and higher quality flavor tobaccos.

“Our balance sheet is well positioned with inventories at year-end of $903.9 million and uncommitted inventory well within our stated range of $50-$150 million…”