An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (Wit­co) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Raoul Glynn ful­ly sup­ports the Unit­ed King­dom’s leg­is­la­tion that seeks to pre­vent chil­dren turn­ing 15 this year from ever smok­ing or va­p­ing. 

Britain's House of Com­mons passed a bill last week ban­ning the sale of cig­a­rettes to any­one born in 2009 or lat­er.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter Wit­co’s an­nu­al meet­ing of share­hold­ers at Queen’s Hall, Port of Spain yes­ter­day, said no sit­u­a­tion should present it­self for an un­der­age child to be in­volved with the prod­ucts or even to pur­chase for a par­ent. 

“We sup­port leg­is­la­tion that pre­vents un­der­age per­sons from ac­cess­ing the prod­uct and that is some­thing we al­ready have in place for cig­a­rettes and we will con­tin­ue to have it for our va­p­ing prod­ucts,” he stressed. 

On the il­lic­it trade front, he said this con­tin­ues to be an up­hill bat­tle for the cig­a­rette man­u­fac­tur­er. 

“Il­lic­it has grown tremen­dous­ly. We have a con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mate of 20 per cent. It can be po­ten­tial­ly more be­cause with this thing there is no sci­ence be­hind it. The il­lic­it trade con­tin­ues to have an im­pact on our busi­ness. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has been sen­si­tis­ing peo­ple and mak­ing sure the key stake­hold­ers are aware of it. The core of it is the Min­istry of Fi­nance is af­fect­ed by this, be­cause of min­i­mum is 20 per cent less rev­enue the min­istry is mak­ing,” Glynn lament­ed. 

He not­ed that the end of the day is for the stake­hold­ers to do more such as im­prov­ing the bor­ders, and try­ing to find and plug the loop­holes. 

In this re­gard, Glynn is call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to clamp down on traf­fick­ers. 

“One of the things that I want the au­thor­i­ties to do is make it a harsh­er penal­ty if you find peo­ple il­le­gal­ly trad­ing. When you have re­tail­ers, know­ing that if they are caught with it, there is a se­vere penal­ty. I think they will think twice about what they pro­vide for con­sumers," he point­ed out.

On the rev­enue side, Glynn said he ex­pects the com­pa­ny’s new va­p­ing prod­uct, the Vuse, to have a strong and pos­i­tive ef­fect on rev­enue this year. 

“The qual­i­ty of the prod­uct is su­pe­ri­or to the oth­ers on the mar­ket, the price points are at­trac­tive, the mar­gin struc­ture is very good and the strength of Wit­co on its abil­i­ty to dis­trib­ute and get the prod­uct where it needs to be is some­thing that we are con­fi­dent we can do with­out de­tract­ing from our core busi­ness. And I’m not just say­ing that be­cause we make it,” he said, tak­ing one of the vapes out of his pock­et and tak­ing a puff. “I’m say­ing it be­cause I am a con­sumer,” he chuck­led. 

The man­ag­ing di­rec­tor said about 12 per cent of the mar­ket us­es va­p­ing prod­ucts and most of these con­sumers use va­p­ing ma­chines on­ly, but a few use both cig­a­rettes and vapes. 

“We have an­tic­i­pat­ed the mar­ket and we have seen it grow in a way that there aren’t few­er cig­a­rette sales in favour of va­p­ing,” he dis­closed.