France to quit making cigarettes as last factory prepares to close The last remaining factory making cigarettes in France is set to close by the end of 2023, the site’s owner told its employees this week.
Issued on: 01/10/2023 - 09:08
The Manufacture Corse des Tabacs (Macotab), on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, is the last to manufacture cigarettes in France since the closure of another in the centre of the country in 2016.
Around 30 employees work at the Corsican site, down from 143 in the early 1980s.
The factory makes cigarettes on behalf of industry giant Philip Morris, which recently signalled it was ending the contract.
Contraband packets have also cut into legal sales, according to the factory’s owner Seita, the former French state-owned tobacco monopoly that is now part of the British company Imperial Tobacco.
Seita had already closed France’s last tobacco processing factory in 2019, in the traditional growing region of the Dordogne in the south-west.
Some former factories in Marseille and Lyon have found new as cultural and exhibition spaces, or even a university.
Kicking the habit Efforts by authorities to curb smoking and its health hazards, not least by prohibiting puffing in restaurants and cafes and banning ads for cigarettes, have prompted sharp reductions in cigarette sales in recent years.
Smoking remains the main cause of avoidable deaths in France, according to Santé Publique France health agency, which estimates 75,000 tobacco deaths each year.
The bulk of European production these days is in Germany and Poland.
Wait, my vision of a man wearing a striped shirt and a beret smoking a cigarette is not actually what French people are like?
Not anymore. It’s all changing for the worse. I hear they’re coming after the baguettes next. The mimes are speechless.
Sacré bleu!
No accent on the e
Maybe that is the mime speaking for the first time since childhood.
I can’t find any source of the spelling or meaning of the phrase that does not have an accent over the e other than Wikipedia, which has both depending on who made the edit. You sure 'bout that?
It was originally Sacré dieu(sacred god), but since it’s blasphemy it became Sacrebleu. Sacrebleu on Wikitionary
I’m Quebecois, French is my first language ;)
It is either sacrebleu or sacré bleu, but both are correct
Well steal my onions and call me Jacques!
Jokes aside, I swear they really do walk around with baguettes in hand. 3 days in Paris, sitting at multiple cafes, and we saw it in the morning, at lunch, in the evening. Men, Women, Children, well dressed, poorly dressed (for a Parisian), black, white, brown, blue, green, every combination in between, we’d see someone walking around with baguettes. I’ve lived in multiple cities and visited even more in the US and Europe. Never have I seen so many people walking around with bread!
People eat bread and pick it up from their local bakery then walk home with it instead of stuffing it in the trunk of their SUV to drive two blocks. What do you expect.
You’re right of course, nor was I making any judgements. I loved seeing it! It made me smile. As did the quintessential “scowling french waiter” standing 15ft in front of us on the other side of the side walk, with apron and and all. And despite a previous poster’s comment about their infamous cultural rudeness, these slightly overweight, non-french speaking Americans didn’t experience any overt rudeness at all. If they were bad mouthing us quietly in french they did a great job of hiding it. [shrug]
I would visit Paris again in a heartbeat; though I would never fly Air France nor pass through CDG if you paid me. Such a horrible experience. Guess we’ll fly BA into LHR and take the chunnel or a ferry for the experience.
That’s because fresh baguettes are damn hard to beat.
And hard to eat if they aren’t fresh anymore.
They also live up their their infamous cultural rudeness.
The bagetttes make my poor mouth sore after a couple of days as well. I much prefer the breads in northern Europe.
[shrug] we really didn’t experience the rudeness they are so famous for. But I’m not denying it’s a thing. Either way, I enjoy both styles of bread very much.
Yes monsieur.
Well you still have 50% of the adult population regularly smoking so nothing change on this part.
“Heuh heuh”
background bistro accordion music gets louder
When I went to Paris this summer, lots of locals were smoking. The odor of Paris was urine and cigarettes.
Nothing speaks “city of love” like the smell of stale piss and burnt tobacco at the Eiffel Tower!
lol
No no that’s still accurate, it’s just that the cigarettes are imported now.