At MACOTAB (Manufacture Corse de Tabacs), the last French cigarette factory in Furiani in Corsica, February 8, 2023 (AFP/Archives/Pascal POCHARD-CASABIANCA)
La Seita presented to staff representatives a plan to close the last cigarette factory in France, at Furiani in Haute-Corse, which employs 29 people, we learned from the manufacturer.
Negotiations with staff representatives will begin in mid-October for a closure of the Corsican tobacco factory (Macotab) planned a priori for December, Cyril Lalo, director of external relations at La Seita, told AFP, confirming information from Corsica-Matin.
This closure, which will take place as part of “a project to reorganize part of the activities in Europe”, is motivated by “a continued decline in legal tobacco volumes, which are being replaced by smuggling and counterfeiting”, “a denunciation of the contract by Philip Morris for whom Macotab produced part of the volumes” and “the gradual end of Corsican specificity on tobacco products”, listed Cyril Lalo.
A project to close the Coretab packaging factory in Reunion is also planned, which concerns 14 positions, according to the same source.
The Corsican factory, the last to manufacture cigarettes in France since the closure of that in Riom (Puy-de-Dôme) in 2016, today employs some 30 employees on 10,000 square meters, compared to 143 in the early 1980s.
Most cigarette manufacturing in Europe today takes place in Germany and Poland.
Created in 1961, it belongs to the Seita group (Société d’exploitation industrial des tabacs et des Allettes), a former French tobacco monopoly privatized in 1995, itself a subsidiary of the British giant Imperial Brands, and produces cigarettes for Corsica and other French regions.
France banned tobacco advertising and many factories closed, transforming into cultural places (Marseille) or even universities (Lyon).
Tobacco “is the leading cause of avoidable mortality” in France, according to Public Health France, which estimates the number of deaths due to tobacco at 75,000 per year.
© 2023 AFP
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