Swiss Merchant Corporation, corporate finance boutique in Lugano led by Francesco Caputo Nassetti, was awarded, through the newco Tuxedo Srl, a company created ad hoc, the bankruptcy auction of the Yesmoke Spa, by acquiring the business for the production of cigarettes in the plant of Settimo Torinese (TO), which employs 51 people and has a processing capacity of thirty containers of cigarettes per month.
The fully automated industrial plant covers an area of eight thousand square meters. and can work on two parallel production lines using advanced technology and quality control system on raw material during processing and finished product. Swiss Merchant Corporation also intends to develop the production of "green" cigarettes with organic tobacco from eco-sustainable crops without pesticides, hand-picked and processed without the addition of additives, preservatives or other chemical treatments.
The company will be equipped with a research laboratory to produce cigarettes with paper without high concentration of rubber and with more natural filters. To make the Settimo Torinese plant more efficient, technical solutions will be adopted that will allow Yesmoke to forecast demand and plan the production of cigarettes to adapt it to domestic and foreign market trends, also in partnership with companies operating in the sector in Europe.
98% of cigarettes purchased in Italy are produced abroad and the only two plants in operation are that of Yesmoke in Settimo Torinese and Manifattura Tabacco, in the Marche region, in receivership. Italy is the leading European producer and exporter of unprocessed tobacco and the eighth world exporter by quantity: Italian production (main Virginia and Burley varieties) spread over an area ranging between 15 and 18 hectares is just over 50 tons a year from Veneto, Umbria and Campania. Italian tobacco is considered among the best in the world and "made in Italy" cigarettes are highly appreciated in Asian countries. Smokers remain one of the most numerous categories on the planet: they are 1,3 billion in the world and, according to the latest Doxa survey, 11,7 million in Italy. The three countries with the highest number of male smokers are China with 254 million, India with 91 and Indonesia with 50. Women who smoke are 17 million in the US and about 14 million in China and India.
“Globally speaking, the cigarette market is the most performing of the modern era: it has reached a turnover of 770 billion dollars and compares favorably with the new forms of economy” – he says Caputo Nassetti, CEO of Swiss Merchant Corporation – “The Global Tobacco Index, which represents the performance of medium and large companies active in the tobacco sector in 23 developed countries, has in fact grown by 196,4% in the last ten years, more than double compared to equivalent index of the tech sector, the World Information Technology Index which increased “only” by 94,4%”.
