Philip Morris Italia, the Italian affiliate of the Philip Morris International (PMI) group, has renewed its commitments with the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies towards the Italian tobacco agricultural supply chain. The company's commitment will therefore also continue in 2021, guaranteeing stability and predictability to a strategic supply chain for the development of the country which today has over 50.000 employees in the cultivation and primary transformation phases.
Philip Morris's is the largest investment in the Italian tobacco supply chain by a private company. For 2021, the company has confirmed investments of up to 100 million, in line with the Programmatic Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2019, which it envisages investments of up to 500 million euros over five years, covering about 50% of the total Italian production and 100% of the production of the companies associated with Coldiretti through the ONT division - National Tobacco Organization.
"With the renewal of the agreements with the national authorities for 2021, we confirm our commitment to guarantee stability and predictability to the Italian tobacco supply chain - he declared Marco Hannappel, President and CEO of Philip Morris Italy, who added –. There are around 1.000 small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises with which we are sharing a long-term evolutionary path, which sees Italian farmers play a fundamental role in transforming our sector towards a smoke-free future, to replace cigarettes in the shortest possible time with innovative products.”
The agreement provides for the confirmation of all the commitments signed in the 2019 Minutes: from the purchase of the raw material to the promotion of social and environmental sustainability programs for all the farmers involved, which the latter undertake to implement within the scope of the contracts signed with ONT Coldiretti.
“We are particularly proud of this agreement because it concretely promotes innovative cultivation models that look to the future of the supply chain. Thanks to the application of the guidelines on Sustainable Tobacco Production and the code of "Good Agricultural Work Practices" (ALP) that we strongly wanted, we have been able in recent years to intervene not only on the sustainability of production processes, such as correct management of water or the reduction of CO2, but also to promote actions to combat undeclared work and to protect workers' rights”, commented Cesare Trippella, Purchasing and Leaf Tobacco Management Manager for Philip Morris in Europe.
The signed renewal is only Philip Morris's latest commitment in Italy. As is known, the company has invested over 1 billion in the first factory in the world for smokeless tobacco products, in Crespellano (Bologna), where 1.200 people work. More recently, the Philip Morris Digital Information Service Center (DISC) was also inaugurated in Taranto, a center dedicated to digital services to the consumer: an investment of 100 million euros over five years.
Content written in collaboration with Philip Morris Italia
