Petone's Imperial Tobacco factory to close with 122 job loss

The Imperial Tobacco factory in Petone is likely to close this year, with 122 people losing their jobs. The company announced yesterday that it's proposing the closure of the plant, a result of a decline in cigarette use around the world. The factory has been open since 1929, originally owned by British American Tobacco before Imperial took over in 1999. And only eight years ago Imperial spent about 45-million-dollars upgrading the factory, allowing it to export more than three-billion cigarettes a year to Australia. Imperial's Australasian head of corporate affairs, Kirsten Daggar-Nickson, told reporter Ben Strang that people aren't smoking cigarettes like they used to.