Philip Morris, tobacco settlement worth 150 million GDP per year

The first stop is scheduled in Naples, at the Federico II University, on 21 July. The initial step of the road show - which will then touch Umbria and Veneto - in which Philip Morris Italia will explain the terms of the agreement on the tobacco supply chain to farmers. Above all, it will illustrate the economic impact of the approximately Euro 1 billion investment decided by the Italian division of the American multinational. An investment that will safeguard more than 28,700 jobs for ten years, including direct and induced employment, and will contribute to the GDP of the three regions involved by almost 150 million euros per year. A turning point marked by the agreement signed at the end of last year with Coldiretti and the Ministry of Agriculture. A turning point whose numbers are now known. Having archived the era of the previous three or five-year agreements, for the first time the agreement is spread over ten years.

"We wanted to give companies a long-term perspective in order to facilitate investments and offer employment certainty," says Cesare Trippella, head of Leaf UE of the multinational. "And to make the sector more attractive," Trippella continues, "we have integrated into the agreement Digital Farmer, a project aimed at young farmers to graft training, innovation, skills development, new technologies and to foster youth entrepreneurship into agriculture, in collaboration with the University of Perugia.

The agreement once again - it has been so since 2011 - is without intermediaries, for a zero-kilometre supply, for purchase, management and first processing. With an investment reserved 70% for the agricultural part and 30% for the processing of the raw material in the regions where most of Italy's tobacco production is concentrated. In practice, as far as employment is concerned, more than a third of the workers in the multinational company's agricultural supply chain in Italy are guaranteed in each region, also creating the conditions to remove obstacles in finding labour. "Now with the workers we can do long-term reasoning, with ongoing training activities," confirms Gennaro Masiello, vice president of Coldiretti. "We can offer new guarantees and stabilise them. Then there is the question of investments by farms. "Those that can benefit from long-term supply chain agreements are the most innovative," Trippella continued, "and we know that many companies have already put in place the renewal of their machinery. The agreement triggers a season of investments'. Investments that also concern the diversification of energy supply through renewable sources, from biomass to photovoltaic plants, for the sustainability of production. "Our growers no longer use diesel," says Trippella.

The agreement involves about a thousand companies. In Campania, Philip Morris, the first buyer in the region, is buying 50% of production. Here, the employment impact is estimated at over 10 thousand workers, including direct and induced workers. With a total contribution to the regional GDP of 24.8 million per year. The road show will then continue in Perugia (where it is scheduled to take place on 30 July) and in Veneto, in Verona, where it will stop on 1 August. It is precisely in Veneto, where Philip Morris takes over 60% of total production, that Europe's largest tobacco farms are located, an example also of digitised and innovative agriculture. In this case, the total contribution to the GDP of the region will be 55.8 million per year, for a total of 9,170 jobs, again between direct and indirect. As for Umbria, the agreement will generate a GDP of 68.3 million euro (again per year). While 9,500 jobs will be guaranteed. Umbria in the Italian panorama of the multinational is also a pole of excellence for innovation in the sector. This is where Philip Morris' Laef Innovation Hub is based. A pole that, again in collaboration with the University of Perugia, is the heart of research, experimentation and development of new skills. Also in Umbria, in the province of Perugia, is the European Leaf Wharehousing Centre, the first storage centre for tobacco destined for processing in Philip Morris' main European production plants. While in Terni, the Philip Morris Disc, the heart of assistance to Italian adult consumers of smokeless cigarettes and for which an investment of 30 million has been put in the pipeline, has been operational for two years. For its Campania twin, in the province of Caserta, another 50 million investment is planned.