OREANDA-NEWS. December 4, 2012. Belarus’ Grodno-based Neman tobacco factory invested over Br100 billion (USD 11.7 million) in new equipment in 2012, Neman General Director Yuri Chernyshev told.

The investment covers the purchase of German facilities (HAUNI and FOCKE&Co) to produce Compact King Size and Super Slims cigarettes. With new manufacturing equipment, Neman will be in a position to increase output of slim cigarette formats, which are popular on both the domestic and overseas markets.

This year Neman would split the cost of new manufacturing equipment with British American Tobacco Company, with a total of 12 million euro invested, Neman’s CEO informed. Part of the new equipment has already been installed, with more production facilities to arrive in January-February 2013, Chernyshev informed.

At the moment, Neman uses seven contemporary cigarette packing machines (made in Germany and Italy) producing 6,000-10,000 cigarettes per minute. All production facilities are complete with Cerulean and Borgwald test stations to get each cigarette controlled under eight parameters.

Grodno-based Neman tobacco factory was founded in 1861 and transformed into a joint-stock company with all shares controlled by the state in December 2007. Neman increased cigarette output 9.8% on the year in January-October 2012 to 21.9 billion units. Neman’s share of Belarus’ tobacco market stands at 60%. Eight out of ten cigarettes produced in Belarus and manufactured by Neman.