Japan Tobacco plans to raise production in Russia by more than 40 per cent as demand in its home market shrinks, the company’s president Hiroshi Kimura said in an interview to Bloomberg Television on 18 July.
“Russia’s economy is in full swing, and political conditions are stable,”Kimura said. “It’s not unrealistic to envisage producing 100 billion cigarettes a year, and it’s time to seriously consider capital spending in Russia,“ he elaborated. Experts for the tobacco industry, however, believe acquisition of minor local cigarette makers to be the only way to expand the company’s presence on the Russian market that has been facing continuous overproduction for the past few years. (vt)
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