Our operations

A world leader

We have long prided ourselves on being a world leader in manufacturing technology. WD & HO Wills began the trend back in 1883 by introducing a cigarette-making machine that could produce around 200 cigarettes a minute. At the time it was hailed as revolutionary. Today, our fastest machines can produce around 14,000 cigarettes a minute. We have moved towards an increasingly automated internal supply chain to maintain the highest possible production rate. Our investment in product design and innovative processing techniques continues to make us one of the world's lowest cost producers of tobacco products.

Our operations

Our manufacturing operations are structured into three regions covering the Group's global operations. Each region has responsibility for all products including cigarettes, roll your own and pipe tobaccos, cigars, filters, tubes and rolling paper products. Within each region, 'leading factories' have been identified to provide supporting activities to local satellite factories.

Efficiency and competitiveness

At key locations around the world, we have invested in state-of-the-art equipment, further improving our efficiency and competitiveness.

We have a consistent benchmarking system across our factories and are looking to develop this further, extending productivity and efficiency measures to our supply chain, logistics and distribution activities.

Moving towards a consistently measured production capability across the Group gives us significant opportunity to review and balance our total supply chain activity, while retaining the flexibility to react quickly to changing market conditions. This is an area from which we expect to gain significant benefit over the coming years.

Shared technology

Our factories around the world benefit from shared technology and expertise, leading to reduced manufacturing costs. We focus on high quality, low-cost manufacturing and have an ongoing drive to improve productivity across the business. Quality, flexibility and innovation are key in all of our facilities.

Advanced techniques

Conditioning and blending tobacco is the first stage of our manufacturing process. We have invested heavily in advanced techniques in this area with a view to improving quality, cutting waste and speeding production.

Common quality standards and measures

Simplification and rationalisation of product portfolios and packaging are areas of focus. We also concentrate on the important area of business quality, particularly in applying common quality standards and measures, and have obtained ISO accreditations across a number of factories.