Around 200 workers of the Yaroslavl-based Balkan Star tobacco plant belonging to the Franco-Spanish tobacco group Altadis are reported to be facing redundancy notice by the end of the year.

In this way the company hopes to cut production costs. Altadis currently employs 1,200 staff at the facility acquired by the group at the end of 2004. Last March, a new CEO, Andreas Seemüller, was appointed to the plant that has definitely known better times. In 2005, the company lost 2.3 percentage points of its market share year-on-year. (vt)