June 12 (SeeNews) - British American Tobacco (BAT) plans to invest 800 million euro ($944 million) over the next five years in its factory in Ploiesti, Romania to start producing tobacco sticks, the company said.
The investment, which will generate 200 new jobs in Romania, will support the expansion of BAT’s innovative tobacco heating devive - glo - in Europe during the second half of 2018, the company said in a statement on Monday.
A completely new manufacturing hall will be built dedicated to producing the specially designed tobacco sticks – called Neostiks – which work with the glo tobacco heating device.
“We have a long-held ambition to offer smokers a range of potentially reduced-risk products – like tobacco heating devices, e-cigarettes and oral tobacco. This ambition has seen us launch vaping products and tobacco heating devices in 16 countries in the last five years and we’ve bold plans to increase our geographical footprint in the second half of 2018," the regional director of BAT for Europe and North Africa, Tadeu Marroco, said.
In total, an additional 7,000 square metres of production space will be created and, once completed, the factory in Ploiesti will be the sole supplier of glo Neostiks across Europe. The investment will also enhance the cigarette-making capabilities within the factory, according to the statement.
The company aims to generate over 1 billion British pound revenue from Next Generation Products (NGPs) by the end of 2018 and increase this figure to over 5 billion British pounds by 2022.
($ = 0.847508 euro)