Effohi, left, accepts an award from one of the judges.
One of Imperial Tobacco’s businesses in Ivory Coast has won two occupational health and safety awards in a government-run employee well-being competition.
The 3I printing facility in Abidjan, which supplies eight of Imperial’s factories in Central and West Africa, was judged to have the best working conditions in the country.
3I was recognised also in the safety at work category following the implementation of group-wide health and safety standards.
The criteria for the awards included the level of risk assessment carried out by companies and the training provided for employees to ensure greater awareness of health and safety issues.
“We’re very proud to have received this recognition,” said Parfait Effohi, 3I’s operations manager. “This will encourage us to continue our efforts to achieve our main goal of zero accidents.
“These awards confirm the ability of the 3I team to implement and maintain the Group Health and Safety policy in the workplace by taking the necessary preventive actions.”
Altria is due to host a webcast at www.altria.com of its Investor Day in New York presentation from about 09.00 hours to about 12.00 hours Eastern Time on June 11.
The webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, will feature presentations by Altria’s chairman and CEO, Marty Barrington, and other members of Altria’s senior management team.
Pre-event registration is necessary at www.altria.com, where an archived copy will be made available.
Bulgaria seems once again to be questioning whether it should transform its enclosed-public-places tobacco-smoking ban into a restriction, the Focus News Agency has reported.
At present, the proposal seems little more than an idea thrown up by MP, Spas Panchev, though, according to the Focus report, Panchev claims to have the support of Prime Minister designate, Plamen Oresharski.
But Bulgaria has been here before. In December, Bulgaria’s then-Prime Minister, Boiko Borissov, hinted that he would not oppose a move under consideration by his ruling party MPs that would have seen the country’s public-places tobacco smoking ban eased to allow people to light up in restaurants and bars after 22.00 hours.
But the Health Minister, Desislava Atanasova, stood firm against the proposed amendment to Bulgaria’s anti-smoking law.
Bulgaria’s ban on smoking in enclosed public places came into effect at the beginning of June 2012.
The ban replaced previous restrictions that allowed restaurants and bars to set aside smoking areas with separate ventilation systems.
The French government could be set to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places and the workplace, according to a story in The Local Europe.
Sales of electronic cigarettes are said to be booming in France and the country’s Health Minister, Marisol Touraine, was expected yesterday to be handed a report that puts these devices largely in a positive light.
The report is based on a study commissioned in March and carried out by the pulmonologist, Professor Bertrand Dautzenberg.
The Local said that a radio RTL story had predicted that Touraine was nevertheless going to announce a ban.
At present, employers have discretion as to whether or not to allow the use of electronic cigarettes by employees.
A ban is likely to do serious damage to the electronic cigarette industry. One supplier made the point that 20 per cent of its business was tied up in selling disposable products to restaurants, clubs, bars and hotels.
The Local said that about half a million French people were estimated to be using electronic cigarettes as a way of weaning themselves off traditional cigarettes.
The Andhra Pradesh Flue-cured Virginia Tobacco Growers’ Association has decried an Indian government proposal to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in the domestic tobacco industry, according to a story in the latest issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter.
The association believes that such a move would undermine the domestic industry.
In a petition to the Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry, Anand Sharma, the association said that FDI would pave the way for the free entry of multinational companies, which would adversely impact the livelihood of millions of growers.
It warned of a loss to the exchequer of Rs56.60 billion during the next three to four years.
The incidence of smoking in Israel dropped by 2.9 percentage points in one year: between 2010-2011 and 2011-12, according to a story by Dan Even for Haaretz.
This figure is based upon surveys conducted by the Health Ministry’s Center for Disease Control, which is required to submit an annual report on the state of smoking in the country.
In 2011-12, a survey conducted among 2,964 Israelis aged 21 years and older indicated that 17.7 per cent of the adult population smoked cigarettes.
Among Jewish men, the figure was 20.9 per cent; among Jewish women, 12.0 per cent; among Arab men, 41.4 per cent; and among Arab women, 8.1 per cent.
The 2010-11 survey found that 20.6 per cent of the adult population comprised smokers.
It found, too, that, overall, 27.2 per cent of men and 14.5 per cent of women were smokers; while 19.8 per cent of Jews and 24.9 per cent of Arabs were smokers.
The report showed also that last year Israelis consumed 415 million packs of cigarettes, down 2.6 per cent from the 426 million packs consumed during 2011.
More than 56 per cent of Romanian smokers are planning to quit their habit in the coming year, according to a story by Irina Popescu for the Romanian Insider, quoting a study conducted under the European Commission’s campaign, Ex-smokers Are Unstoppable.
The study showed that 80 per cent of Romania’s smokers believe willpower would be the main factor in getting them to quit, while 43 per cent agreed that motivational techniques could help them to stop smoking.
About 28 per cent of Romanian smokers find it difficult to resist the impulse to light up when drinking tea or coffee and 27 per cent find it difficult to socialize with other smokers if they are trying to quit.
However, 42 per cent of the approximately 1,000 Romanian respondents said they would feel proud if they succeeded in stopping smoking, while another 42 per cent considered they would feel healthier and pay more attention to their health if they quit.
Most of the smokers who responded to the survey said they smoked between 70 and 140 cigarettes weekly.
As well as providing green energy to the mill and local community, the new biomass plant is marked out as Cumbria’s tallest building.
Iggesund Paperboard’s new biomass plant at Workington, England, was yesterday inaugurated in the presence of the board of directors of the Holmen Group, the forest industry group to which Iggesund Paperboard belongs.
When the CHP (combined heat and power) plant came online in March, the company’s paperboard mill at Workington switched its energy source from fossil natural gas to biomass, thereby reducing its annual fossil carbon emissions by the equivalent of the emissions of more than 58,000 cars, each driven 20,000 kilometres per year.
As well as now being self-sufficient in electricity and heat, the mill will also be able to supply both green electricity and heat to local residents.
With its 400 employees, Iggesund Paperboard’s Workington facility is the UK’s only producer of folding box board.
Incada, the paperboard made at the mill, is constructed of a central layer made of mechanical pulp that is produced on site and that gives a low weight combined with high stiffness, with outer layers made of purchased chemical pulp to create high whiteness and good printability.
“For more than a decade now Iggesund Paperboard has invested to raise the standard of what was originally a very ordinary paperboard mill to one that is state of the art,” said Ola Schultz-Eklund, the mill’s managing director. “Including the £108 million spent on the CHP plant, we have invested more than £200 million in this transformation.”
Iggesund Paperboard said in a press note that, step by step the investments and renovations had raised both the quality and quality consistency of Incada, and, as a result, the mill had found new end uses for its products and gradually improved its profitability.
“In our investment in this new biomass CHP plant, profitability and reduced climate impact go hand in hand,” Schultz-Eklund said. “We know that the cost of fossil-based energy will increase faster than that of biomass, so we regard this investment as a way to stabilise our energy costs.
“At the same time our emissions of fossil carbon dioxide from the production process have now fallen to almost zero, which should reasonably make us an even more interesting option for the large end users, who have more or less promised consumers that they will both declare and reduce the emissions created by the products they sell.”
Among other things, Incada is used for packaging, and, the press note said, paperboard packaging was a competitive method of protecting goods throughout the distribution chain, from producer to consumer.
“We base our production on a renewable raw material that can later be recycled either in material or energy form,” Schultz-Eklund said. “Our manufacturing process meets high environmental standards and our paperboard is an excellent fit in a society which is increasingly moving towards greater sustainability.”
Ireland may become the second country to require standardized packaging for cigarettes, reports the Kildare Nationalist.
Health Minister James Reilly announced government approval for his controversial plans, which he hopes to have enacted early next year. Plain packaging made its global debut late last year in Australia.
An Irish retail group cautioned the move would help criminals and fuel cigarette smuggling. Retailers Against Smuggling accused the minister of “not giving a damn” about independent retailers. Tobacco companies claimed plain packaging would do more harm to the economy by making smuggling easier rather than stopping children from taking up the habit.
Reilly said while many arguments will be made against the move, he is confident the legislation will be justified and supported purely by the fact that it will save lives.
Ireland has been at the forefront of tobacco control. It was the world’s first country to enforce a workplace smoking ban, which included pubs and restaurants, in March 2004, and the first EU country to remove all tobacco advertising from retail outlets.
Bulgaria has formally backed Greece in its opposition to some of the revisions proposed by the EU Commission at the end of last year to the Tobacco Products Directive, according to a Bulgarian News Agency story quoting a press note issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.
Both countries produce leaf tobacco – mainly oriental tobacco, which is a small but key element in many American-blend cigarettes.
Bulgaria and Greece are concerned largely with the proposed revisions that would tend to standardize tobacco products and their packaging.
The Commission has proposed packaging regulations that, while not quite along the lines of Australia’s ‘plain packaging’ are certainly tending in that direction. It has called for the prohibition of flavourings and the banning of certain categories of products, including slim cigarettes.
The Agency story said that these measures would have a ‘disastrous impact on employment in tobacco production’.
In Bulgaria, more than 200,000 people worked in the tobacco production sector, more than in any other EU member state, the press note said.
A declaration by Greece, supported by Bulgaria, Spain, Poland, the CzechRepublic, Hungary, Cyprus, Italy, Romania and Croatia, argued that the proposed new rules put forward by the Commission would seriously affect the livelihood of more than 500,000 EU citizens employed in tobacco growing and processing.
