Seeds of Hope

Corporations help to give developing countries a leg up – and not just financially. This is illustrated by the Japanese company JTI, which has its global headquarters in Switzerland.

The sweet, aromatic fragrance of dried tobacco leaves hangs in the air, with stacks of the large, greenish-brown bales almost reaching to the roof of the spacious warehouse. The most important raw material for creating tobacco products, it comes from countries all across the globe, but primarily originates in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. We’re standing in the factory run by Japan Tobacco International (JTI) in Dagmersellen near Lucerne, Switzerland.
In local parlance, this production plant is still called "Camel-Fabrik", or "Camel Factory", after the American cigarette brand that came off the conveyor belt here for the first time almost 50 years ago. Camel cigarette ...