While British American Tobacco blames the illicit trade for its exit from local manufacturing, a look at its London ledger reveals a company prioritising multibillion-pound shareholder returns over its South African industrial footprint. British American Tobacco (BAT) is currently executing two very different strategies that, when viewed together, tell a cynical story of global capital optimisation. In South Africa, the company is cutting muscle.
Most recently, BAT announced the closure of its historic Heidelberg manufacturing plant later this year, slashing 230 people from its local workforce. Daily Maverick has it on good authority that the company also cut a number of sales positions towards the end of last year. These are all signs pointing to BAT transitioning from a committed local manufacturer to a lean importer.
While South African workers face the grim reality of retrenchment, the company’s global treasury is operating with an entirely different set of priorities. On Monday, 19 January 2026, the companyannouncedthe continuation of its aggressive share buyback programme, purchasing 138,086 of its own shares on Friday, 16 January at prices reaching up to £43.86 (about R965 at that day’s exchange rate) per share. BAT is offloading the social and industrial cost of a tough market in South Africa while simultaneously using its vast cash reserves to reward global shareholders and boost its earnings per share (EPS).
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A former BAT employee who worked at the company for more than a decade and agreed to speak to Daily Maverick on the condition of anonymity, described a workforce that had long anticipated the outcome of the Heidelberg closure. According to the source, the dominant sentiment was not anger at the company but frustration with the sustained state failure to contain the illicit cigarette trade. Even though the former Western Cape employee was one of many retrenched from BAT late last year, they described the news of the Heidelberg closure as “a shock”, and added: “I’ve got no ill feelings towards BAT, it is one of those things.” According to the source, the tobacco manufacturing sector had been shrinking steadily, with repeated restructurings in the company becoming normalised.
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