BAT Moves 120 Jobs From Southampton To Bucharest

British American Tobacco (BAT) is planning to lay off 120 workers from a factory in Southampton and move the jobs to Bucharest, according to the local newspaper Southern Daily Echo. "The move comes 15 months after the maker of Lucky Strike and Dunhill stubbed out a hundred years of manufacturing history in the city by moving its Regents Park factory overseas, with the loss of 550 jobs. Now 119 more posts look set to follow in their footsteps, with finance work being moved to Bucharest in Romania, where it is "more economic"," the newspaper wrote.

"It is key that we provide the most efficient and effective service for the region and this review has concluded that it would be more economic to provide these services from Romania." said John Lucas, BAT"s head of finance shared service for Western Europe. A consultation process has begun, but is not expected to materially change the numbers going. The work is scheduled to be fully transferred by the middle of next year. BAT claims the factory will continue to operate with approximately 800 employees.

BAT recently acquired the control package in Denmark"s Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni for 2.05 billion GBP (4.1 bln USD) thus securing 60% of the Scandinavian cigarette production. Earlier, BAT made a winning offer of 1.72 billion USD for the Turkish cigarette producer Tekel. In Romania, BAT is market leader with 38%, followed by Philip Morris (30%) and JTI (22%). At the end of H1 last year, the company posted a gross turnover of 1.45 billion RON (439 million EUR), up by 40% y/y.