Tag: United Kingdom

UK workers ‘furious’
Gallaher’s UK tobacco workers are ‘furious’ over its parent company’s plans to close its final salary defined benefit scheme to future accrual, according to a story by Natalie Tuck for the UK’s Pensions Age Magazine.
According to the union Unite, Japan Tobacco International plans to close the UK scheme at the end of December and move workers into a defined contribution scheme.
Unite has accused JTI of ‘blatant opportunism’ over the scheme’s closure, which follows the relocation of the company’s manufacturing operation in Northern Ireland to Poland with the loss of 800 jobs.
The union said that there was still a 700-strong workforce in the UK of which 177 were in the final pension scheme.
Unite has members at the company’s UK headquarters in Weybridge, Surrey, and at a distribution centre in Crewe.
Unite is due to meet UK bosses at Weybridge on October 12, when it will be asking for a boost to the pensions of the employees.
It pointed out that JTI had profits of £4 billion in 2016 and paid out £1.6 billion to shareholders.
“JTI can confirm that Gallaher Limited is, regrettably, proposing to close its defined benefit pension schemes to future accrual as of 31st December 2017,” a JTI spokesperson was quoted as saying.
“The company has entered into a period of consultation with trade union and other employee representatives about the proposals, which remain subject to such consultation.
“The company does not intend to make any further comment on this matter whilst the consultation process is ongoing.”
October 5, 2017
IQOS pops up in London
The launch of a third IQOS store in London, England, marks a further development in Philip Morris’ pledge to convert 100,000 UK smokers to this heated tobacco product, and to reach its goal of a smoke free future for the UK, according to a press note issued by PM Limited UK & Ireland.
Yesterday, the company opened an IQOS store in Shoreditch, London, at Boxpark, which is said to be the world’s first pop-up mall.
This follows the launch of the brand’s first UK store in Soho, London, which opened in December, and its second store, which opened in Westfield, London, earlier this month.
PM said the new store was Boxpark’s first vaping pop up, and that its opening reflected the increasing numbers of people looking for alternatives to traditional cigarettes.
‘The new East London store marks a further development in the brand’s pledge to convert 100,000 UK smokers to its heated tobacco product, IQOS, and to reach its goal of a smoke free future for the UK, where cigarettes are no longer sold,’ the company said.
‘This pledge is part of PMI’s [Philip Morris International’s] global commitment to offer smokers a range of alternative smoke free products for those that cannot completely quit (which is always the best option). Building its future on this vision, PMI has invested over £3bn into research to develop a broad portfolio of potentially reduced risk products, which includes IQOS and its unique heat not burn technology.
‘The Boxpark IQOS store, which will be open seven days a week, will offer a bespoke in-store experience for customers. In the store, adult smokers will be given guided trials by trained IQOS staff to educate them about how the heated tobacco product works and discuss how they can switch to IQOS. Customers will also have the chance to customise their IQOS device at the store’s personalisation station, which will be a unique offering for customers visiting the Boxpark store.
‘Designed by international creative agency Avantgarde, the Boxpark store is minimalistic with an all-white interior and a lightly coloured stone floor. Intelligent design details such as mirrors, hidden drawers and back lighting create space within the store for a sleek and modern finish.’
“This is a significant development in IQOS’s retail expansion in the UK and we are delighted that the Boxpark team has recognised the unique retail experience our IQOS store will bring,” said Peter Nixon, MD of Philip Morris Limited UK & Ireland.
“Our first store which launched in December of last year has seen a significant response from customers and we are thrilled to be bringing IQOS to East London as part of our growing retail expansion.”
September 29, 2017
Well-off using illegal trade
Forty-eight percent of UK smokers earning less than £6,000 a year buy tobacco from illicit sources, according to the report of a poll commissioned in June by the TMA, the trade association for the UK’s tobacco industry.
More surprisingly perhaps, 40 percent of smokers who earned more than £60,000 also buy tobacco from illicit sources.
The TMA said that the June poll, conducted nation-wide among 12,065 adult smokers, was commissioned so as to help it understand smokers’ ‘awareness, behaviour and attitudes towards illicit tobacco’.
The poll’s questions were said to have been devised after the receipt of input from HM Revenue and Customs and other stakeholders.
Among the key findings: 72.5 percent of UK smokers buy tobacco from sources where UK taxes aren’t paid, including illicit tobacco and that from abroad, and overall 41 percent of smokers buy tobacco from illicit tobacco sources.
Eighty-eight percent of smokers think that tobacco prices are too high, while two percent think they are too low.
Twelve percent of smokers who knew of illicit tobacco in their local area reported it to the authorities, down from 20 percent in 2016.
In announcing the poll’s findings, the TMA said tobacco on which UK taxes was not paid was a major issue for law enforcement and taxpayers, with £3 billion of tax lost to the illegal trade and cross border shopping in 2015-16.
The link between high tobacco taxes and the illicit market was acknowledged by many leading independent institutions including the Royal United Services Institute, the TMA said, before adding that government taxes accounted for up to 90 percent of the price of a pack of cigarettes in the UK.
‘The regulatory changes to the UK tobacco market this year – the ban on small packs and the introduction of plain packaging – may make the problem worse, with 45 percent of smokers saying they are more likely to purchase illicit tobacco because of the changes,’ it said. ‘Moreover, smokers are increasingly buying larger amounts of untaxed tobacco, with 53 percent saying they buy 200 cigarettes or more from non-taxed sources…
‘Overall this survey confirms that the government’s policies do not have the support of smokers and are likely to be a large contributing factor to the high level of illegal tobacco in the UK.’
Responding to this year’s findings, TMA director general, Giles Roca, said the results revealed the true extent of how the government’s high tax policy, in creating some of the highest tobacco prices in Europe, had continued to push smokers to buy from non-UK-duty-paid and illicit sources.
“High taxes have cost the treasury billions of pounds in lost revenues whilst giving a boost to the criminals who are behind the illegal trade,” he said. “There is also worrying evidence that children are increasingly accessing tobacco from these illicit sources.
“The regulations that came fully into force this year banning small tobacco packs and introducing plain packaging are making the problem worse by pushing smokers towards the illicit market rather than encouraging them to quit.
“There is a real risk that the problem could be made worse if the government decides to increase tobacco duty for a second time in nine months in the upcoming budget. These findings suggest the government needs to completely re-think its tobacco taxation policy.”
September 28, 2017
Imperial Brands on track
Imperial Brands said today that it was on track to meet earnings expectations for the full year to the end of September at both constant currency and reported exchange rates.
In a trading update posted on its website, the company said it was continuing to invest in its strategy to drive sustainable growth in a ‘particularly challenging industry environment’. ‘The impact of this investment on earnings is mitigated by our cost programs, pension scheme restructuring and ongoing efficiencies,’ it said.
‘Our increased investment is delivering a stronger second half performance with market share gains in most of our priority markets and continued outperformance of our Growth Brands…
‘In next generation products, we are gearing up for new launches in an extended footprint in the coming year focused on improving the consumer experience and further building the blu brand…
‘Earlier in the month we took the opportunity to realise value via a further sell-down of our Logista holding, and we are using the proceeds to buy-back shares and reduce debt, redeploying capital in an efficient manner.
‘Further to overnight media speculation, we confirm that we have been working, together with other stakeholders, to seek to create a sustainable future for the UK wholesaler, Palmer & Harvey, with whom we have a close trading relationship.’
Imperial is due to announce on November 7 its preliminary results for the year to the end of September.
September 28, 2017
Using science to reduce risk
Scientists at British American Tobacco say they have created the most comprehensive database of scientific test results for an electronic cigarette.
The results of the studies provide evidence that the use of a Vype ePen could be substantially less risky than is smoking a traditional cigarette.
The database was said to have been created using data collected from a series of scientific tests that could form the basis of a template to support health-related claims such as “reduced risk” for e-cigarettes and next generation products, such as tobacco-heating devices, when the use of those products was compared to that of conventional cigarettes.
“This is a very new consumer category and both consumers and regulators rightly want as much information as possible about the products available,” said Dr David O’Reilly, group scientific and R&D director at BAT.
“We believe a science-based approach is vital to gathering the evidence needed to demonstrate the reduced-risk potential of e-cigarettes and other products, which is why testing products like Vype ePen in this way is so important. We intend for this to be the first of many applications of our scientific assessment framework,” he said.
The application of BAT’s approach to the scientific assessment of potentially reduced-risk products is reported today in the journal Regulatory Pharmacology and Toxicology, where the results of 17 published studies on Vype ePen are described.
The tests included Preclinical studies that demonstrated the relatively simple composition of Vype ePen vapor compared to that of conventional cigarette smoke: that demonstrated there were about 95 percent less toxicants in Vype ePen vapor than in smoke. Further tests revealed that this vapor had no biological impact on human cells tested in the laboratory, or at least a much-reduced impact when compared to that of conventional cigarette smoke.
Clinical Studies, which involved humans, revealed that Vype ePen vapor delivered nicotine to the consumer as efficiently as cigarette smoke did, which is an indicator of whether the product might provide smokers with a satisfactory alternative to a cigarette.
Population studies, which use predictive modelling to estimate an overall harm reduction effect of the product on a population, indicated that the wide availability of an e-cigarette such as a Vype ePen could have an overall harm-reduction effect because more people might quit smoking when e-cigarettes were widely available.
In a press note, BAT said that, taken together, these results formed the basis of a comprehensive dossier of scientific data that laid the groundwork for establishing the Vype ePen’s reduced-risk potential.
‘This dossier of results presents the kind of information that regulators like the US Food and Drug Administration want when any company submits a Modified Risk Tobacco Product application in order to introduce novel reduced-risk tobacco products to the US market,’ the note said.
‘It can take years to create such a dossier and our scientists say that it would be impractical to create a new dossier every time a product is tweaked.’
“This category is so fast moving that there are new and improved products appearing all the time,” said Dr James Murphy, head of reduced risk substantiation at BAT. “If for example, a scientific dossier was required before these products could go on the market, this could drastically impact the availability of new and improved products and their value in tobacco harm reduction.
“Importantly, this sort of framework could provide datasets for product families so that full scientific tests wouldn’t need to be done with every new generation of the same product – making the innovation process faster whilst still giving consumers and regulators assurances around the relative risk of each product. This could mean improved products with harm reduction potential can be developed, assessed and brought to market more quickly without duplicating tests. We are urging regulators and public health officials to look at this methodology in this context.” Murphy said.
September 25, 2017
Tracking tobacco costly
The chief executive of the UK’s Association of Convenience Stores, James Lowman, has said that EU regulations governing the operation of track-and-trace systems for tobacco products will place significant cost and time burdens on retailers, according to a Talking Retail story relayed by the TMA.
In the EU, the revised Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) foresees the adoption of a track-and-trace system for cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco by May 2019 and for other tobacco products by 2024.
Lowman said it was important to combat the illegal tobacco trade across the supply chain.
However, he said: “[T]hese regulations would place a significant cost and time burden on retailers, requiring them to register and pay for identifier codes for both their overall business and each individual store, and produce them each time they purchase tobacco”.
Article 8 of the revised TPD was said to have provided for the establishment of ‘a global tracking and tracing regime, proposed by the European Commission’s consultant Everis, consisting of national and regional systems…’.
Lowman said his association would be working with the UK government and the EU to amend the regulations.
A consultation on the proposals is due to run until October 2.
September 20, 2017
Cigarette price matters
Researchers at Imperial College London have found an association between infant mortality rates and cigarette price differentials, according to a EurekAlert story citing a new study.
The authors were quoted as saying that eliminating budget cigarettes from the market might help to reduce infant deaths globally.
“Thanks to tax and price control measures, cigarettes in EU countries are more expensive than ever before,” said Dr. Filippos Filippidis, of Imperial’s School of Public Health and the lead author of the study. “However, the tobacco industry is good at finding loopholes to ensure that budget cigarettes remain available. In this study, we found that the availability of budget cigarettes is associated with more infant deaths.”
The study, published yesterday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, analysed nearly 54 million births across 23 EU countries from 2004 to 2014. The researchers obtained data on cigarette prices over this period and examined whether differences between average priced and budget cigarettes was linked to infant mortality rates.
And they found that during the 10 years under review, overall infant mortality declined in all countries from 4.4 deaths per 1,000 births in 2004 to 3.5 deaths per 1,000 births in 2014.
The cost of average priced cigarettes increased during this time in all the countries studied. The difference between average-priced and budget cigarettes varied from 12.8 percent to 26.0 percent over the study period.
The authors said that though EU governments had made cigarettes more expensive by increasing taxes, tobacco companies had responded with differential pricing strategies, where tax increases were loaded onto premium brands. This caused a price gap between higher and lower priced cigarettes that gave smokers the option to switch to cheaper products, making tax increases less effective.
September 19, 2017
Vaping provides no gateway
A major study conducted across the UK has concluded that regular use of electronic cigarettes among people 11–16 years of age ‘remains very low, at three percent or less, and remains largely confined to regular smokers’.
The study, led by professor Linda Bauld of the University of Stirling and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, examined data from five large scale surveys with different designs and sampling strategies conducted between 2015 and 2017: The Youth Tobacco Policy Survey; the Schools Health Research Network Wales survey; two Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Smokefree Great Britain-Youth Surveys; and the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey. Cumulatively these surveys were said to have collected data from more than 60,000 young people.
In their conclusion, the researchers said that their paper highlighted the current rates of e-cigarette use among young people in the UK, where e-cigarettes formed a part of a tobacco harm reduction policy landscape.
While it was estimated that there were 2.9 million e-cigarette current users among adults in Great Britain, regular use among people 11–16 years of age remained at three percent or lower, and remained largely confined to regular smokers.
Regular e-cigarette use among never smokers was very rare.
These low rates of regular use suggested that youth experimentation was not currently leading to greater frequency of use; however, comparing youth e-cigarette data and trends across surveys and countries was crucial to better understand youth trends.
Survey measures had to be designed to assess frequency of use, rather than just ever- or past-30-day use.
The full study is available at: http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/9/973/htm.
August 31, 2017
Management board changes
Kingsley Wheaton (pictured), MD, Next Generation Products (NGP) at British American Tobacco is to manage the integration of NGP into the wider business.
‘Now that we have built a successful NGP business which is poised for substantial growth, we will be fully integrating NGP into our existing business infrastructure across the Group – both within the functions and the regions – to leverage the scale and expertise of the whole group to drive growth in an area that is fast becoming a key part of our mainstream business,’ BAT said in a note posed on its website. ‘Kingsley Wheaton, managing director, Next Generation Products, will manage this integration process.’
The future of the NGP business was spelled out in a note posed on BAT’s website today saying that, following the acquisition of Reynolds American Inc, BAT was simplifying its regional structure.
The company’s organizational structure would in future be based on three regions:
- Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa (including East and Central Africa; West Africa and South Africa), whose regional director will be Ricardo Oberlander, formerly regional director, Americas.
- Europe and North Africa (including Russia, Ukraine, Caucasus, Central Asia, Belarus, and Turkey), whose regional director will be Tadeu Marroco, formerly regional director, Western Europe.
- Asia-Pacific and Middle East, whose regional direct will be Johan Vandermeulen, formerly regional director, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Jack Bowles, currently regional director, Asia-Pacific, will be appointed to the newly-created role of COO for the international business, excluding the US, where Debra Crew, who as president and CEO of Reynolds American, joined the management board with effect from July 27.
Andrew Gray, currently director, marketing, will be appointed chief marketing officer; while David O’Reilly, group scientific and R&D director, will remain a member of the management board, and will report to the chief marketing officer.
August 31, 2017
Risk continuum quantified
The use of electronic cigarettes carries much less cancer risk than does tobacco smoking, though the use of some types of e-cigarettes is more-risky than the use of others, according to a story by Iqra Mumal on lungdiseasenews.com quoting a new study.
The research, entitled, Comparing the cancer potencies of emissions from vaporized nicotine products including e-cigarettes with those of tobacco smoke, was published in the journal Tobacco Control.
The story said that both the scientific community and the public had been divided over the health risks associated with vaporized nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn devices.
Studies had shown that vaporized nicotine products, or VNPs, could expose people to cancer-causing agents, but the question was how much cancer risk they posed.
Dr. William E. Stephens of the University of St. Andrews, the UK, led a team that sought to determine the cancer risk of the individual compounds in VNPs, and then calculate an overall VNP cancer risk.
They looked at published analyses of emissions to generate cancer-risk figures for a number of nicotine-delivering products, including cigarettes, e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn devices, and medicinal nicotine inhalers.
Each of the products were found to have different cancer potencies. Cigarette smoke had the highest. potency, while most e-cigarettes had cancer potencies that were less than one percent of cigarette smoke, though a small minority had much higher potencies than did others.
This minority of e-cigarettes was associated with high levels of carbonyls – or carbon compounds – that the products generated when a lot of power was applied to their atomizer coils.
Another finding was that heat-not-burn devices had lower cancer potency than did cigarette smoke but much higher potency than most e-cigarettes had.
The team concluded that cigarettes posed the highest lifetime cancer risk, and that they were followed on the cancer-risk scale by heat-not-burn devices, then e-cigarettes and medicinal nicotine inhalers.
Mumal’s story is at: https://lungdiseasenews.com/2017/08/25/study-finds-that-cancer-risk-of-e-cigarettes-is-much-lower-than-that-of-cigarette-smoke/
August 29, 2017