Category: News This Week

  • Smoking goes airside at Aberdeen airport

    The establishment of an airside smoking shelter at Aberdeen International Airport in Scotland is expected to help reduce the number of full terminal evacuations caused by people smoking in areas where smoking is banned, according to a story by The Scotsman.

    The shelter, which is adjacent to the main departure lounge, will provide passengers who have been processed through security and are waiting for their flights with somewhere to have a cigarette before takeoff.

    The smoking shelter was erected after more than 400 people who took part in a survey last year said they would like to see an airside facility installed at the airport.

    “It is designed to reduce the number of full terminal evacuations,” an airport spokeswoman was quoted as saying.

    Many such evacuations, which cost thousands of pounds, were caused by passengers lighting up in prohibited areas, activating smoke alarms and causing major disruption and delays, she said.

    “Interestingly, even 61 percent of non-smokers who took part in the survey said they supported an airside smoking shelter,” the spokeswoman added.

  • Ousted retailers could be compensated

    The Hungarian government is considering what it should do to compensate tobacco-product retailers who missed out when tobacco retail licenses were recently put out to tender, according to an All Hungary Media Group story (AHMG).

    Legislation passed in September last year provided for the establishment of a state monopoly of the retail sale of tobacco products from July 1, 2013. The process, overseen by the National Tobacco Trade Non-profit (NTTN) organization, has involved putting out for tender a limited number of tobacco retail concessions.

    Prime Minister Viktor Orban apparently told public radio Kossuth the government was working to ensure that people whose livelihoods depended on selling tobacco products, but who had failed in their bids for licenses, stayed in business.

    And ruling Fidesz party group leader Antal Rogan said he supported the idea of compensation.

    But asked whether plans were afoot to ban family members of local council officials from getting licenses, Rogan said such a move would create more problems than it would solve.

    Meanwhile, NTTN has refused a socialist MP’s request for access to documents containing bids submitted for the recent tenders.

    The company rejected Csaba Toth’s request to view the bids, arguing that even though NTTN was publicly owned, it was not a state agency and so it did not have to disclose such information.

    Toth said he would appeal to the National Development Ministry.

    Opposition parties have sharply criticized the government for the tobacco tender, alleging that Fidesz party members had influenced the process.

    Earlier this year, the NTTN was forced to announce a second tender in 1,417 communities from which no applications had been received during the initial tender.

  • ‘Lighting up’ given whole new meaning

    Hand-rolling tobacco intercepted by customs officers as it was being smuggled into the U.K. is to be burned in an incinerator to help generate electricity for the national grid, according to a story by the Western Morning News.

    But the electricity generated is unlikely to blow any fuses – only 150 kg of tobacco is to be burned.

    The tobacco was detected by a trading standards sniffer dog at a parcel office in Plymouth, Devon, last year.

    It was hidden inside camping refrigerators, one of which also contained £38,770 in shrink-wrapped cash, part of the proceeds from a previous shipment.

  • E-cigarette firm appoints supply-chain VP

    The e-cigarette company FIN Branding Group has appointed Joe Cipolla as its vice president of its supply chain.

    The company said that Cipolla would oversee the “end-to-end supply chain with responsibility for procurement through distribution and warehousing, and maintain relationships with FIN’s internal partners and vendors.”

    Before joining FIN, Cipolla served as the senior director of business strategy and supply chain for Campbell Soup Foodservice. And prior to that, he spent 13 years with Kraft Foods where he served as director of global supply chain strategy, finance and capital.

    “As we move components for our brand globally, having someone of Joe’s caliber on our team is an important part of our growth strategy,” said FIN chairman and CEO Elliot B. Maisel.

    “He understands the critical nature of an effective and efficient supply chain, and we are excited to have him on our team.”

  • New president for Lorillard’s blu eCigs

    The e-cigarette company, blu eCigs, acquired by Lorillard last year, has appointed Jim Raporte as its new president.

    The company said that, with more than 30 years of experience across tobacco, food and business services industries, Raporte was set to lead blu eCigs’ “functional operations” and help drive its transition from an emerging startup to a large scale second-generation company.

    Raporte will work closely with blu eCigs founder and previous president, Jason Healy.

    Healy is said to have chosen to step down as president and hand over the reins of the company he created in 2009 to Raporte so as to focus on the company’s creative marketing and product development efforts.

  • Altria to webcast annual meeting

    The Altria Group is due to host a live audio webcast of its 2013 Annual Meeting of Shareholders on May 16 starting at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

    Directions for pre-event registration are at www.altria.com.

    An archived copy of the webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, will be made available at www.altria.com.

  • RAI increases quarterly dividend

    Reynolds American Inc. said yesterday that its board of directors had approved a 6.8 percent increase in the quarterly cash dividend on the company’s common stock, taking it from $0.59 per share ($2.36 per share annualized) to $0.63 per share ($2.52 per share annualized).

    The dividend will be payable on July 1 to shareholders of record on June 10.

    “This increase is in line with the company’s policy of returning about 80 percent of net income to shareholders in the form of dividends, and underscores our commitment to returning value to shareholders,” said CFO Thomas R. Adams.

  • WHO snags Kosovo in its tobacco-control net

    The World Health organization announced it had snared Kosovo in its ever-growing tobacco-control net. The country has adopted a comprehensive tobacco control law in line with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). The measures include:

    • 100 percent smoke-free indoor public places, workplaces, and public transportation, as well as specified outdoor areas, with some minor exceptions;
    • comprehensive bans on tobacco advertizing, promotion, and sponsorship, including a ban on retail tobacco product displays;
    • graphic health warnings on both sides of the pack;
    • ban on misleading packaging, including descriptors such as ‘light’ and ‘low’;
    • prohibition on sales to and by minors;
    • ban on sales in health, education, and athletic facilities;
    • granting power to the Ministry of Health authority to ban ingredients;
    • constituents and emissions limits with reporting requirements for manufacturers; and
    • cessation and education measures, include 45 minutes each month of mandatory programming on public radio and television.

    Additionally, among the range of measures is the strongest protection against tobacco industry interference, based on Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC.

  • Dalligate update: Kimberley denies asking for €60 million

    Defence lawyers of Sliema restaurateur Silvio Zammit yesterday pressed the police’s witness Gayle Kimberley on whether she was the one who came up with the €60 million figure at the heart of the Dalligate scandal.

    Kimberley denied it categorically, but lawyer Edward Gatt insisted on the point, reminding the young lawyer that she was testifying under oath, according to a story in The Malta Times.

    He then went back to a note that Kimberley had prepared for Zammit with a series of questions for the former European Commissioner John Dalli and asked why she had written down that Swedish Match made a turnover of €500 million, half of which was profit.

    She said that the figure was suggested by Swedish Match, adding that the intention was to relay the message to Dalli that the company was actually a modest trader in the tobacco industry.

    However, at this point, Dr Gatt and his colleague Kris Busietta pressed further saying that she had mentioned that figure because she was later going to ask for €50 million to lift the ban through her contacts with Dalli. She later suggested changing it to €60 million “so it would not be a round figure”, according to the lawyer.

    Kimberley also rejected this but the lawyer again reminded her that she was testifying under oath, adding that she had plans to use the money to set up a lobbying office in Brussels and buy property in Sliema with her former lover Iosif Galea. Kimberley also denied this.

    Shortly after this, Gatt stopped the cross-examination, saying he would continue at a later date because he needed time to review a lot of material, which the defence was analyzing, suggesting that they had material which was not available to the police or OLAF. Earlier, in fact, Gatt pointed out that Kimberley sent most of her emails through her phone. Nonetheless, when asked she said that neither OLAF nor the police had seized her phone, despite seizing her work and home computers.

  • Tobacco the crop of choice in Zimbabwe

    Zimbabwe had sold 107 million kg of flue-cured tobacco for a total of $400 million by the end of the 55th day of sales, according to a story in the Zimbabwe Herald.

    By the same stage of last season’s sales, 84 million kg of flue-cured had been sold for  $315 million.

    The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board was said to be confident that this season’s 170 million kg target would be surpassed.

    And the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union vice president, Johnson Mapira, was quoted as saying that tobacco production was expected to continue to increase because of favourable farm prices. Tobacco was the only crop where farmers were guaranteed good prices and instant cash.

    Mapira said the good payment method used in respect of tobacco sales meant that tobacco farmers did not have problems paying their workers. And he said that farmers were now using some of the proceeds from tobacco to support other projects.