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Zambian owned Roland Imperial Tobacco Company Limited has invested US$8 million in setting up a cigarette manufacturing plant in Lusaka’s Makeni area.
General manager-trading division Pingilani Mwenda said the factory will have an installed capacity of between 5,000 and 7,000 cigarettes per minute, with a running time of 15 hours per day.
Roland Imperial Tobacco was the only player that has a cigarette manufacturing factory that produces the Life Full flavour brand launched in October 2013 and most recently, Life Menthol this month.
“The factory is able to produce two billion sticks per year, whereas, Zambia’s consumption is only one billion sticks per year,” Mr Mwenda said.
Mr Mwenda said establishment of the Cigarette processing and Tobacco processing Plants in Zambia will spur mainly more than 1,000 peasant farmers to increase their hectarage and more shall be encouraged to engage in tobacco growing.
He said the resultant effect of this is increased employment creation were farming activities takes place.
“There shall be increased labour requirements at cultivation, weeding, harvesting and tobacco curing stages.
“At each stage, the labour requirement will have been increased due to scaled up production demands. The jobs thus created are permanent and in this case, largely in the rural areas or communities where farming takes place,” he said.
Zambia has no cigarette manufacturing plant, despite being a world renowned tobacco grower of immense quality and flavour. The country has one threshing plant which does not produce Cut Rag (the tobacco form needed to feed into a cigarette making plant).
