Japan Tobacco to Cut 30% of Workforce, Nikkei English News Says

Source from:  By Silvia Cernea Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) 10/17/2008

Japan Tobacco Inc. will cut 30 percent of its domestic workforce because of the declining market for cigarettes, Nikkei English News reported, without saying where it got the information. The company will reduce its workforce to about 1,200 in about three years from 1,700 now, which will save the company several billion yen each year, Nikkei said. Separately, Japan Tobacco plans to increase capital investment by about 25 percent to 50 billion yen ($496 million), investing in production systems that will increase their productivity by 25 percent, the news service said. Tobacco sales fell 4.3 percent to 258.5 billion cigarettes in fiscal year 2007, and Japan Tobacco expects the market will keep decreasing at the rate of 4 percent to 5 percent a year, Nikkei reported. To contact the reporter on this story: Silvia Cernea in New York at scernea@bloomberg.net. Enditem