BAT project ‘creating 800 jobs’

CAPE TOWN — British American Tobacco (BAT) announced yesterday that its South African subsidiary was entering the final phase of a R1bn expansion project to enhance sales, marketing and distribution operations.

The project, which started in 2011, has seen significant infrastructure investment across SA and the creation of about 800 new jobs in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. The investment was made by BAT SA, despite the tobacco industry facing an increasing number of challenges in the country, including rising levels of tobacco trafficking, and an increasingly uncertain regulatory environment.

Last year alone, law enforcement authorities seized more than 1-billion illicit cigarettes, destroyed about 80-million of these, and made more than 1,300 arrests.

Kingsley Wheaton, group corporate and regulatory affairs director for BAT, who is visiting SA this week, said yesterday that the investment “is a clear illustration of our confidence in SA and our commitment to this important market”.

“SA already houses one of our strategic factories, in Heidelberg, Gauteng, and this investment project will complement that by adding new trade marketing and distribution capabilities,” he said. “While we are excited about our South African operations, we are equally concerned at the alarmingly high incidence of tobacco trafficking in the country.

“The illegal tobacco trade has the potential to undermine not only infrastructure and human resource investments made by legitimate companies such as ours, but the South African government’s own agenda to regulate tobacco, given tobacco traffickers rarely comply with the laws of the land,” Mr Wheaton said.

Independent research shows that the illegal tobacco problem in SA has more than doubled in the past four years to about 30% of total cigarette consumption.