Pacific under serious ‘counterfeiting attack’

FORENSIC laboratory tests have confirmed that the stock of Pacific cigarettes seized on the Botswana-South Africa border about two weeks ago were indeed “fake.”
This comes as Africa Risk Consulting, which offers continental business intelligence and brand protection, among other services, has said the global counterfeiting industry could be worth US$2,3 trillion by next year, and a recent BATSA-Ipsos research had exonerated the tobacco manufacturer.

“There are over 11 significant disparities with genuine Pacific cigarettes. The cigarettes that were seized are different in almost every aspect, even though these differences area virtually undetectable to the general consumer,” said Pacific Cigarette Company (PCC) chief executive Yves Le Boulengé, adding they were “deeply troubled by the considerable effort to copy its brands due to their strong consumer demand”.

“Only through careful examination of the packs and cigarettes are we able to discern the differences between our genuine products, and these counterfeits, despite our considerable investment in security technology,” he said this week.

Coming just months after the BATSA research had exonerated the company’s brands as “some of the most upright in the market”, Le Boulengé said PCC was “clearly under counterfeit attack” and a joint operation with South African authorities had also netted 950 master cartons (totalling 475 000 packs) of counterfeit cigarettes in Port Elizabeth last week.

The cigarettes, it has emerged, were “shipped in from an Asian country and fraudulently declared as furniture”.
“We call upon consumers to familiarise themselves with genuine Pacific cigarettes that are in the D-shaped pack. Anything else… must be considered counterfeit,” Le Boulengé said, adding their “collaborations with law enforcement agencies would continue to rid the market and retail shelves of contraband ciggies”.

Crucially, Sadc should copy the South African model to clamp down on contraband trade and the regional tobacco industry must join in to fight this piracy.
This comes after a consignment of counterfeit cigarettes were seized at the Botswana-SA border a fortnight ago.
At the time, PCC said preliminary checks had also shown that the impounded stock was not produced by the Zimbabwean firm.

“The success of Pacific Blue in the South African market has made it a target for counterfeiters … In our efforts to stem the flow of counterfeits, we have implemented … security measures to delineate authentic Pacific cigarettes,” Le Boulenge said, adding “quality laboratory checks would be deployed to stop a scourge that was robbing regional countries of tax collections and jobs”.
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