Category: Packaging

  • New Tobacco Health Warnings in India

    New Tobacco Health Warnings in India

    Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive

    Tobacco manufacturers selling in India will have to print a new health warning on their products starting Dec. 1, reports Mint.

    The Union Health Ministry has specified two sets of warning messages and images to be used on both sides of the pack. The first, “Tobacco causes painful death,” must be printed with an image on one side of a pack, and the message “Tobacco users die young” must be displayed with an image on the other side of a pack.

    The packs must also display a toll-free helpline for smokers wishing to quit.

    Health activists welcomed the new warnings.

    “It’s a proven fact that the lives of tobacco users are shortened by up to 10 years as compared to nontobacco users,” said S.K. Arora, medical superintendent of the Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital and renowned tobacco control expert. “The warnings play a significant role in helping tobacco users quit the habit.”

    In the second round of the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, 61.9 percent of cigarette smokers, 53.8 percent of bidi smokers and 46.2 percent of smokeless tobacco users were considering quitting due to the warning label on packets. The number is significantly higher compared to the 2009–2010 figures.

    According to government data, tobacco use causes more than 1.3 million deaths every year

  • Cigarette Firms Shift to Biodegradable Films

    Cigarette Firms Shift to Biodegradable Films

    Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive

    Cigarette makers have shifted from regular plastic wrapping to biodegradable wrapping for cigarette packs, well ahead of the India’s single-use plastic ban, reports The Economic Times, citing the Tobacco Institute of India (TII).

    The single-use plastic ban took effect on July 1. The biodegradable material being used is compliant with international standards and the recently released BIS standards, according to the TII.

    “Biodegradation of the biodegradable plastic starts upon coming into contact with soil. This material is extremely beneficial, as it would biodegrade naturally in landfills as well. The biodegradable plastic will not add any strain to the solid waste collection and recycling system,” TII said in a statement.

    TII represents cigarette makers such as ITC, Godfrey Phillips India and VST Industries.

  • Goebel Helps Forop Secure BOPP Ambitions

    Goebel Helps Forop Secure BOPP Ambitions

    Photo: Goebel IMS

    Goebel IMS is playing an instrumental role in the expansion plans of Fujian Forop Advanced Materials Co., the Germany-based manufacturer of slitting and rewinding machinery announced in a press note.

    Forop Advanced Materials aims to become the world’s largest manufacturer of BOPP films. To help achieve this ambition, the company intends to inaugurate two new BOPP film factories in southern China by 2025, giving it a total of six production sites with 30 BOPP production lines.

    In 2021, the company signed an agreement to acquire 16 Goebel IMS Monoslit 9000 BOPP slitter rewinders from Goebel. According to Goebel, Forop Advanced Materials will likely purchase additional primary slitter rewinders for another six BOPP production lines.

    “Such a project is unique in our history, we are very proud and thankful that Forop put its trust in Goebel IMS,” said Tobias Lanksweirt, managing director of Goebel Schneid- und Wickelsysteme and sales director film. “With this project we show once more that we are the world market leader if it comes to primary slitting and rewinding, especially in the field of high-speed BOPP converting. We are looking forward to a long and fruitful cooperation with Forop.”

  • Study: Graphic Warnings Boost Pack Hiding

    Study: Graphic Warnings Boost Pack Hiding

    Illustration: FDA

    The presence of graphic health warnings encouraged smokers to hide their packs but did not change smoking behavior among participants in a recent study published in Jama Network Open.

    As part of their tobacco-control policies, many countries require cigarette manufacturers to print images of smoking-related diseases on their cigarette packs. A similar rule is pending in the U.S., but the measure has been repeatedly postponed due to industry litigation and the Covid-19 pandemic.

    A group of public health experts at the University of California in San Diego wanted to find out how graphic health warnings would affect the behavior of U.S. smokers.

    They asked smokers to purchase their preferred brand of cigarettes from a study website. Participants were randomized to receive their cigarettes in one of three pack designs: a package with a graphic warning label, with a blank pack, or in a standard commercially available U.S. pack. Approximately 19,000 packs were delivered to participants.

    The researchers found that smokers given packets stamped with images of diseased feet, ill children and throat cancer continued to puff on about 10 cigarettes daily up to a year after receiving them. But six in ten admitted to concealing the packets at least some of the time due to the images, which was up 40 percent from before the study began.

    More than 120 countries already force tobacco companies to put warnings over the side-effects of smoking on their packets.

    But a growing body of studies suggest that the warnings are becoming less effective as smokers are becoming too used to them.

    One paper from 2019 found that about 36 percent of smokers in Canada—which has had graphic health warnings for many years—found them “not at all” or “minimally” effective in prompting them to quit.

  • Plain in Vain

    Plain in Vain

    Photo: Taco Tuinstra

    Standardized cigarette packaging is not the miracle cure for reducing smoking prevalence, studies indicate.

    By Stefanie Rossel

    December 2022 will mark the 10th anniversary of the introduction of plain cigarette packaging in Australia, which was the first country to require tobacco manufacturers to market their products in generic unbranded packs. By lowering the appeal of tobacco products to consumers, legislators hoped standardized packaging would help reduce smoking prevalence.

    Since then, more than 20 countries and territories have followed suit, including France and the U.K. (both 2017), Saudi Arabia and Turkey (both 2019), and Hungary and Myanmar (both 2022), according to a report released by the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) in conjunction with the ninth session of the Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) last November. CCS Senior Policy Analyst Rob Cunningham said there was a “strong, unstoppable global trend for countries to implement plain packaging.” Noting that the pace of implementation was accelerating, he concluded, “These developments are very encouraging as plain packaging is a key measure to protect youth and to reduce tobacco use.”

    But is it really? Above all, plain packaging is an inexpensive measure that can be implemented more easily than other FCTC tobacco control measures, such as establishing a national tobacco cessation system. But how successful has plain packaging been in the past decade in achieving its goal? If standardized packaging is the lifesaving measure that organizations such as Tobacco-Free Kids make it out to be, surely its impact should be measurable?

    Lack of Unambiguous Evidence

    There is abundant scientific research on the effect of standardized packaging, but study outcomes remain inconclusive or even contradictory. Often, study design is limited and does not take external factors into account, thus distorting the results.

    A 2016 study commissioned by the Australian Department of Health and authored by Tasneem Chipty, for example, concluded that the combination of plain packaging and updated and enlarged graphic health warnings is succeeding in reducing smoking prevalence. Chipty estimated that plain packaging policy contributed approximately 0.55 percent of the 2.2 percent decline in smoking prevalence over the 34 months following implementation. What the author did not consider, however, was a hefty increase in tobacco excise introduced at approximately the same time as standardized packaging.

    Similarly, researchers of the Tobacco Control Research Group in 2020 found that the underlying rate of decline in tobacco sales almost doubled after the U.K. started requiring plain packaging in May 2017. According to the study, monthly sales declined from 3.29 billion cigarettes in May 2015 to 3.16 billion cigarettes in April 2018. According to the U.K. Office for National Statistics, however, smoking prevalence had fallen significantly more in the years before the introduction of generic packaging as many smokers had switched to reduced-risk alternatives.

    Weak Designs

    A July 2021 study by Luiss Business School, Luis Guido Carli University and Deloitte Financial Advisory commissioned by BAT, which looks at the efficacy of plain packaging in the U.K. and France, sums up the weaknesses of many studies in this field.

    Claims about the success of generic packaging, the authors say, are often based on survey data that measure the impact of the measure on downstream psychosocial variables or “intermediate outcomes,” such as perceptions relating to the appeal and harm of tobacco products and attention to health warnings, and self-reported beliefs and intentions regarding future smoking behaviors. Whether these variables impact behaviors in due course is left unexamined.

    In addition, the authors claim, proponents of standardized packaging often refer to continuing reductions in smoking rates and consumption-related data that has not undergone any econometric analysis. Without accounting for potentially confounding factors, such as price increases, seasonal trends and preexisting consumption trends, it is impossible to draw firm conclusions from such data alone.

    According to the authors, econometric analysis is also required to assess research suggesting that plain packaging, contrary to its objective, increased tobacco use. Several studies concluded that generic packaging reduced brand loyalty, prompting smokers to move from premium to discount brands, which in turn allowed them to purchase more cigarettes for the same amount of money. However, such studies omit confounding factors, such as tax increases, according to the Luiss Business School researchers.

    The Holistic View

    To generate more useful data, the Luiss Business School study takes a broader view. It is also the first study to investigate consumption data for more than three years of generic packaging in each of the two countries examined, which is a longer time frame than that studied in previous analyses and thus allows for more robust conclusions on the initial impacts of plain packaging, according to the authors.

    Unlike previous studies on the situation in France and the U.K., the Luiss Business School report performed a set of different econometric models, including a structural break analysis to understand whether the implementation of generic packaging in the two countries caused a real change in the cigarette consumption trend. The authors say they found no such structural break as a result of plain packaging.

    Additionally, the researchers ran a regression model estimation where cigarette consumption is regressed on a set of covariates including plain packaging. After controlling for alternative explanations, such as price, generic packaging had no statistically significant impact on cigarette consumption in the U.K. and France, according to the researchers.

    The authors also compared cigarette consumption trends in France and the U.K. with those in Italy and Germany, which still allow branded tobacco packaging. Again, the estimated effect of plain packaging was indistinguishable from zero. In France, however, the measure was associated with a statistically significant—and unintended—increase in per capita cigarette consumption of 5 percent (relative to the counterfactuals and up to October 2020, the end of the investigated time series).

    Altogether, the study authors conclude, there is no evidence that standardized packaging has reduced cigarette consumption in the two investigated countries after more than three years of full implementation in each jurisdiction. They also point out that their analysis doesn’t include shifts to the consumption of reduced-risk products.

    Eurobarometer data shows that the share of e-cigarette users rose from 2 percent in 2017 to 6 percent in France in 2020 and from 2 percent to 4 percent in the U.K. over the same period. Both countries also had a share of 1 percent of current heated-tobacco product users in 2020. According to the survey, stopping or reducing tobacco consumption was the most frequently cited reason for taking up e-cigarettes.

    This data suggests that the impact of reduced-risk products might have also contributed to the decline in cigarette consumption in the U.K. and France. Not including the shift to these products would likely bias the analysis in favor of finding an effect of standardized packaging, according to the study.

    Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.
  • Cigarette Health Warnings Effective Date Postponed Again

    Cigarette Health Warnings Effective Date Postponed Again

    Photo: Tobacco Reporter Archive

    On May 10, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued an order in the case of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. et al. v. United States Food and Drug Administration et al., No. 6:20-cv-00176 to postpone the effective date of the “Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and Advertisements” final rule.

    The new effective date of the final rule is July 8, 2023. Pursuant to the court order, any obligation to comply with a deadline tied to the effective date is similarly postponed. For example, the FDA strongly encourages entities to submit cigarette plans as soon as possible but no later than Sept. 8, 2022.

    This is not the first time the new health warnings have been delayed. The rule was most recently delayed to April 9, 2023, after being postponed multiple times before this over the past few years. The rule was originally supposed to go into effect in 2021.

    Additional details on the rule, as well as the new effective date and recommended date for submission of cigarette plans, can be found on the FDA’s website.

  • Myanmar Postpones Plain Packaging

    Myanmar Postpones Plain Packaging

    Photo: Taco Tuinstra

    Myanmar has postponed the implementation of standardized tobacco packaging until April 2023, following a lobbying campaign by opponents of the measure, reports Eco-Business. The law was originally set to take effect on April 10, 2022.

    The new packaging regulations require the outer surfaces of tobacco product packages to be a standardized dull dark brown, flat, smooth and devoid of any attractive designs or decorative elements.

    Health advocated criticized the delay.

    “Instead of postponing its implementation by 12 months, the government should have penalized tobacco companies for not complying by the April 10 deadline,” said Ulysses Dorotheo, executive director of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance.

    “Only the tobacco industry will profit from this bad decision while the government and people of Myanmar will suffer more diseases, healthcare costs, deaths and their related socioeconomic burden,” added Dorotheo.

  • Myanmar to Implement Standardized Packaging

    Myanmar to Implement Standardized Packaging

    Photo: Taco Tuinstra

    Myanmar is set to implement the Standardized Packaging Notification that was issued by the country’s Ministry of Health Oct. 12, 2021, according to Eco-Business.

    The notification will go into effect April 10, 2022, followed by a 90-day phase out period for old tobacco packaging; old packaging must be phased out by July 12, 2022.

    New packaging must be a standardized dull dark brown color, be flat, smooth and devoid of any attractive colors, designs or decorative elements. Pictorial health warnings are required to cover 75 percent of the packaging’s front and back surfaces. Tobacco product packages include boxes, cases, cartons, etc.

    “With standardized packaging, Myanmar will be implementing a highly effective public health policy that will help denormalize tobacco use,” said Ulysses Dorotheo, executive director of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance. “We look forward to the full and strict implementation of this regulation and call on the government to swiftly identify and penalize any tobacco company that does not comply by the April 10 deadline.”

    “Standardized packaging is a cost-effective and strategic way to discourage tobacco use; it prevents the tobacco industry from using packaging to attract consumers in a creative but deceptive way. Pictorial health warnings more effectively convey to the public the dangers of tobacco use,” said Dorotheo.

  • Thailand: New Graphic Health Warnings

    Thailand: New Graphic Health Warnings

    Photo: kikujungboy

    Retailers and wholesalers in Thailand will have to sell cigarette packs with newly designed warning labels beginning April 11, reports The Bangkok Post.

    The new packs must have text warnings and newly designed pictorial warnings showing graphic details of the consequences of smoking, according to Khachornsak Kaewcharas, deputy director-general of the Department of Disease Control.

    “Violators who still sell cigarette packets with the old pictorial warnings are liable to a fine of no more than THB40,000 [$1,197],” he said.

  • Stora Enso Suspends Operations in Russia

    Stora Enso Suspends Operations in Russia

    Photo: Stora Enso

    Stora Enso will stop all production and sales in Russia until further notice due to the ongoing invasion in Ukraine. Stora Enso has three corrugated packaging plants and two wood products sawmills in Russia, employing around 1,100 people. The company will also stop all export and import to and from Russia. A mitigation plan has been activated to secure availability of input materials from other sources.
     
    “The war in Ukraine is unacceptable, and we are fully behind all sanctions. We will now focus all our attention on supporting our customers and the well-being of our employees,” said Annica Bresky, president and CEO of Stora Enso, in a statement.
     
    Stora Enso’s sales in Russia are approximately 3 percent of total group revenues. The impact on Stora Enso’s sales and earnings before interest and taxes is not material.