A second international tobacco company is to compile a social report. Imperial Tobacco, the world’s fourth largest, expects to publish its first CSR document early next year.
The work has been led by Ian Bailey, Imperial’s head of corporate responsibility, and a small in-house team soon to be boosted by the recruitment of a corporate responsibility implementation manager, who will help to guide the company’s CSR policies worldwide.
The move follows the lead of British American Tobacco, which last year became the first tobacco group to publish a social report.
Companies in the sector have been noticeable by their absence from the field, although Philip Morris, which is the largest, recently began assembling what will be a five or six-person department in the US, and is considering whether to develop a social report at some point in the future.
At present Imperial is being sued for £500,000 ($849,000) over a smoker’s death in the UK’s first tobacco-related damages action. The case, brought by the family of Alfred McTear, who died of lung cancer aged 48, began at the Court of Session in Edinburgh in October and is expected to last several months. Imperial is contesting the claim that smoking had to be the cause of his lung cancer.
Imperial has also been one of the UK government’s main corporate targets over cigarette smuggling. It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Customs and Excise to formalize jointly-developed protocols to combat tobacco smuggling and counterfeiting.
Although next year’s CSR report will be its first, Imperial has made short statements on the subject in annual reports, which have committed it to ‘consider environmental and social issues in all aspects of our business’.
It is a member of the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation, an industry initiative to tackle child labour collaboratively, and in Canada has financed work by the Conference Board of Canada on developing a National Corporate Social Responsibility Report assessing the performance of 300 corporations. The report is due out next spring.
Imperial has 37 manufacturing sites, operates in more than 100 markets worldwide, sells 120 brands and employs 17,500 people. Its turnover is more than £8billion.