Category: News This Week

Iggesund Paperboard has officially inaugurated its new recovery boiler at Iggesund Mill, Sweden, in a ceremony conducted by Lars G. Sundblad, who was managing director of the company at the end of the 1950s when the decision was made to begin manufacturing paperboard.

The new recovery boiler makes it possible for Iggesund to increase production of its Invercote paperboard while enabling the mill to operate on 100 per cent biofuel and be self-sufficient in both thermal and electric power.

Construction of the recovery boiler took two years and cost SEK2.3 billion.

The company is investing a further SEK1.1 billion building a biofuel boiler at its mill in Workington, England.

That investment, for the production of Incada paperboard, is funding a radical change of energy source: from today’s natural gas to bioenergy.

The new biofuel boiler at Workington is scheduled for completion in the spring of 2013.

The Bulgarian restaurant sector is registering record losses because of the country’s tobacco smoking ban, according to a Novinite story quoting the deputy chair of the Bulgarian Hotel and Restaurant Association, Atanas Dimitrov.

Speaking to bTV on Tuesday, Dimitrov said that turnover in the sector had slumped by 50 per cent since the introduction of the ban.

And yet the ban had not and would not reduce the number of smokers in the country. Dimitrov cited data from the Finance Ministry showing that, in June, after the imposition of the ban, revenues from tobacco products excise duty were BGN994 million, which was BGN73 million higher than during the previous month.

He insisted that the ban should be lifted and that the country returned to the previous arrangements whereby hospitality venues had smoking and non-smoking areas.

However, Dimitrov’s pleas are likely to fall on deaf ears. The Health Ministry is unwavering in its support for the ban.

Its representatives said nothing ‘apocalyptic’ had been seen to happen during the past three months when the ban was in effect.

Society had accepted the ban reasonably well, they said, and going back on the ban would be more detrimental.

The Prime Minister of Republika Srpska (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Alexander Dzombic, has said that his government would do everything possible to prevent job losses at the Fabrika Duvana Banja Luka tobacco factory should it be sold to Bulgartabac Holding, according to a Srpska Republika News Agency story relayed by the TMA.

He reportedly said also that he expected negotiations on the sale would be ‘successful’.

Dzombic said that if Bulgartabac purchased the factory, it would produce cigarettes not only for the Bosnian market, but also for other markets in the region.

Labor organization leaders say that Nebojsa Antonic, the owner of Antonic Trade, which currently holds a 55 per cent stake in the factory, has stated that about 50 factory workers could lose jobs.

Farmers inFukushimaprefecture have harvested leaf tobacco for the first time since cultivation was stopped due to the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to a Yomiuri Shimbun story.

This year, leaf tobacco farmers, enthusiastic about reviving tobacco growing, were said to have taken measures to reduce radioactive contamination.

They are currently awaiting the results of radiation tests on their harvested tobacco and are pinning their hopes on making shipments this year. The tobacco is due to be shipped sometime in December.

Fukushimafarmers grow a native species of tobacco and Burley.

In fiscal 2010, they harvested about 1,770 tons of tobacco worth about ¥3.24 billion.

But due to theFukushimanuclear disaster in March last year and Japan Tobacco Inc. soliciting farmers willing to quit leaf tobacco growing, the number of farmers in the prefecture dropped from 1,167 in 2011 to 675 this year.

The Governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman, has said that it would be unfair for the smokers ofOmahacity to be asked to pay an ‘occupation’ tax on cigarettes to help fund a new cancer unit at theUniversityofNebraska’sMedicalCenter.

Heineman said if he were a resident of the city, he’d consider passage of a smokers’ tax as “double taxation”.

Smokers were already contributing to the project via sales and income taxes paid to the state, he said.

Heineman had previously been at odds with the university over its fund-raising campaign for its planned $370 million cancer treatment and research center.

But he said that he had no plans to ask the Nebraska Legislature to rescind $50 million in funding approved earlier this year for the research tower portion of the project.

Filtrona Scientific Services is presenting to the CORESTA Congress currently meeting in Sapporo, Japan, the second instalment of results from research into the effects of smoking parameters on the particulate and nicotine yields of electronic cigarettes.

The results are being presented by Dr Mike Taylor, director of scientific development.

In a press note issued yesterday, Filtrona said that electronic cigarettes were consumed by an estimated 2.5 million people globally and that sales of these products in theUSalone were worth about $2 billion annually

Electronic cigarette brand owners generally claimed that their products delivered nicotine and tobacco flavours without producing the combustion and pyrolysis products associated with lit cigarettes.

In his presentation of the first instalment of results to the 66th Tobacco Science Research Conference held in Concord, North Carolina, US, earlier this month, Tony McCormack, senior manager for intellectual property at the Filtrona Technology Centre, said that numerous special precautions needed to be taken when testing electronic cigarettes as opposed to regular cigarettes.

Electronic cigarettes were found to exhibit higher variability and to behave differently under various ‘smoking’ [or vaping] conditions

Star Scientific and RJ Reynolds Tobacco have settled their patent-infringement dispute over a leaf-tobacco curing process used to reduce nitrosamines, according to a Bloomberg News story relayed by the TMA.

The financial terms were not disclosed in documents filed yesterday in federal court inGreenbelt,Maryland.

The documents stated that the settlement was ‘not an acknowledgement of liability of any party’.

A leading anti-tobacco campaigner has said thatWestern Australiacould halve its adult smoking rates by slashing the number of retailers licensed to sell tobacco, according to an Australian Broadcasting Corporation report.

Health Department figures show almost 4,000 outlets sell cigarettes or tobacco: roughly one for every 450 adults.

The head ofAustralia’s Council on Smoking and Health, Mike Daube, wants that figure gradually reduced to fewer than 1,000 during the next few years.

“I think a few hundred around the state is reasonable while there’s still a bit of smoking going on” Daube said.

“If we took something like 10 per cent out of the 4,000 each year then the smoker wouldn’t notice a dramatic difference.

“And I think this is the kind of creative approach we need to take now.”