Closing of the Last Cigarette Factory in France Sparks Negotiations: Updates on Macotab Closure

2023-09-27 17:52:29

By Le Figaro with AFP

Published 1 hour ago, Updated 1 hour ago

The site employs 29 people in Furiani, Haute-Corse. PASCAL POCHARD-CASABIANCA / AFP

Negotiations with staff representatives will begin in mid-October for a closure of the Corsican tobacco factory (Macotab) planned for December.

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, indicated Cyril Lalo, director of external relations at La Seita, confirming information from Corse-Matin .

This closure, which will take place within the framework of “of a project to reorganize part of the activities in Europe”, is motivated by “a continued decline in legal tobacco volumes, which are replaced by smuggling and counterfeiting», «a denunciation of the contract by Philip Morris for whom Macotab produced part of the volumes» et «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.

Also read: In Corsica, the very last cigarette factory

Thirty employees in the hot seat

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 Industrielle des Tobaccos et des Matches), 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 and many factories closed, transforming into cultural places (Marseille) or even universities (Lyon). The tobacco “is the leading cause of preventable death» in France, according to Public Health France, which estimates the number of deaths due to tobacco at 75,000 per year.

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