Country Overview
Key Facts
Number of Employees: Approximately 500
Main Brands:
Marlboro, Chesterfield
Welcome to Philip Morris South Africa. Established in 2003, we are the second largest tobacco company in the country. Our cigarette portfolio consists of Marlboro and Chesterfield and we distribute our products domestically as well as to export markets in the region. Today, nearly 500 people work for Philip Morris South Africa across our six locations.
Philip Morris South Africa also manufactures other tobacco products such as roll-your-own, pipe tobacco, and nasal snuff, including the market leading pipe tobacco brands Boxer and Best Blend.
PMI’s Leaf Operations Center for Africa is located at our head office in Cape Town. From here, the leaf team coordinates their buying activities throughout sub-Saharan Africa to provide the quality tobaccos that are used in Philip Morris International’s cigarettes.
Smoking and Health
Tobacco products, including cigarettes, are dangerous and addictive. There is overwhelming medical and scientific evidence that smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and other serious diseases.
Addiction
All tobacco products are addictive. It can be very difficult to quit smoking, but this should not deter smokers who want to quit from trying to do so.
Secondhand Smoke
Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes serious diseases in non-smokers, including lung cancer and heart disease. We believe the public health conclusions on secondhand smoke are sufficient to support smoking restrictions in public places.
Effective Regulation
Philip Morris International (PMI) supports comprehensive regulation of tobacco products based on the principle of harm reduction.
To be effective, tobacco regulatory policy must be evidence-based, apply to all tobacco products, and should take into account the views of all legitimate stakeholders including public health authorities, government finance authorities, tobacco manufacturers, and other members of the tobacco supply chain. Regulatory policy must consider the potential to trigger adverse consequences which undermine public health objectives, such as increasing the demand for illicit cigarettes.
While we support comprehensive, effective tobacco regulation, we do not support regulation that prevents adults from buying and using tobacco products or that imposes unnecessary impediments to the operation of the legitimate tobacco market. In that regard, we oppose measures such as generic packaging, point of sale display bans, total bans on communications to adult consumers, and bans on the use of all ingredients in tobacco products.