Just as everybody thought that cigarettes sales would see a change in trend by the decrease in sales, Imperial Tobacco co state that takings for the first six months of the financial year have raised drastically compared to the previous six months of the financial calendar. Imperial Tobacco is currently the fourth largest cigarette producer in the world and has seen brands such as Davidoff, Lambert & Butler and West rapidly improve.
The overall cigarette return for the last 6 months was ₤5.85 billion, which mounts to an increase of ₤270million from the previous six months where earnings where at ₤5.58 billion. The increase in turnover will raise a few eye brows to those who are against cigarettes, a few is an understatement when you think of how many people are in opposition to the smoking of cigarettes. With in what the current state of the cigarette industry is, it would seem a shock for sales to be increasing. The last financial year also saw a strong performance in these six months for cigarette sales at Imperial Tobacco corp. Sales of cigarettes saw a 5% increase from the six months prior, with the increase being at 11% this year there seems to be no sign in any affect from all the bad press surrounding cigarettes.
Not only are cigarette sales growing at Imperial Tobacco, they are also currently trying to expand. There is currently a bid on the table for the takeover of Altadis in Spain. Altadis is a well known manufacture of many cigarettes, but mostly for their cigars. They host brands as of Romeo & Juliet, H.Upmann, Don Diego and many, many more other popular cigar brands. The Altadis International Group has roughly 28,000 staff worldwide and is the 3rd largest cigarette supplier in Western Europe where they supply blond cigarettes, regular cigarettes, and dark cigarettes. The Altadis cigarette group is also the only cigarette manufacturing company that operates in the U.S.A, France and Spain.
It just shows how the cigarette industry and cigarette sales continue to prosper despite all the hopeful pessimistic implications that have been thrown about.
