The rebirth of Yesmoke cigarettes

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ROME – “Yesmoke” cigarettes, produced in Settimo Torinese in a factory whose daring events have filled the judicial, economic and customs reports in recent years, will return to the market in mid-October. Especially for the controversial personality of the founders, the brothers Carlo and Giampaolo Messina, protagonists for fifteen years of a battle with no holds barred against the multinationals of tobacco, which ended at the end of 2014 with their arrest for tax evasion and with the simultaneous putting into state indictment by the American judiciary for unfair competition and, again, for tax evasion. Before the Turin factory, the two brothers had designed a complex and fraudulent Internet-based system for selling cigarettes based in Switzerland which had already brought him complaints and investigations. The two brothers, imperturbable, to whom Michele Fornasero’s documentary “SmoKings” was even dedicated, had built the Italian factory. Until, in 2014, the bankruptcy and the start of another series of painful attempts to re-launch systematically ended with nothing done. Now it seems the right time has come: the plant, with the Yesmoke brand that will be back on the market in a few days, one of the very few production companies in the sector in Italy, was purchased at the bankruptcy court by the Swiss investment bank Swiss Merchant Corporation through the newsco Tuxedo Srl. The Turin entrepreneur Davide Giorgetto Actis has been appointed as the new CEO of the company, and the production lines have been restarted on an area of ​​7 thousand square meters. “The company is studying new” blends “and has an analysis laboratory that allows it to be active in the search for new products, minimizing damage to health,” says Francesco Caputo Nassetti, CEO of Swiss Merchant Corporation. “Investing in research means being more competitive and capable of conquering new markets without the danger of relocation”. To increase cigarette production, the new management of Yesmoke has started contacts with various companies in the sector operating in Europe and the Far East to develop partnership projects. The factory, completely renovated (and without the provocative writings against multinationals such as “7 Bastards” above the photo of the CEOs of Big Tobacco), 28 employees are working today, which the new owners already promise to increase soon (they were 65 at the peak of luck). We work on two parallel automated lines and the quality control systems on raw materials during processing and on the finished product have been improved. In short, everything is ready to bring the only Made in Italy cigarette back to tobacconists. The factories inherited from the former Monopolies as it is known have been closed by the British American Corporation which had taken them over. The advanced productions of Philip Morris remain, which in Bologna produces the new “smokeless” cigarettes and then those of the Tuscan cigar of imminent listing on the stock exchange.

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