Rothmans, Benson & Hedges

Rock City tobacco company of Quebec was founded in 1899 by Olivier-Napoléon Drouin and his brothers as well as a friend, Joseph Picard. The factory experienced prosperity from the 1910s, to the point of becoming one of the largest manufacturers of tobacco products in Canada, as well as having assets in Ontario and elsewhere in Quebec. The factory employed around 500 people, mostly women, and had about twenty sales representatives throughout Canada. Eventually, Rock City struggled and British Carreras Tobacco Company purchased it in 1936. Carreras in turn was bought out by Rothmans International in 1963.

When British American Tobacco bought Rothmans in 1999, it spun off its 60% share of Rothmans, Benson & Hedges as a separate public company. In 2008, the remaining 60% of RBH was acquired by Philip Morris International (PMI), which had controlled 40% of the firm, for US$ 2,000 million, making PMI the sole owner of the company. At the time, RBH was the second-largest cigarette maker in Canada. The acquisition by PMI was targeted to Rothmans Inc, which was a holding company for RBH.

RBH owns or otherwise controls a wide variety of cigarette brands. Some of these are listed and expanded upon below:

Accord: A discount/value brand. Brand variants offered are Red, Blue, and Green (Menthol).

Belmont: Another flagship brand, offered as King Size, Regulars, and Compact King Size (Belmont Edge (Micro in Quebec)).

Belvedere: A premium cigarette brand, offered in both regular and king size. Belvedere-branded empty cigarette tubes and rolling tobacco are also available for purchase.

Lawsuits

Rothmans has been involved in a number of lawsuits in Canada. In a key suit which commenced in 2006, Rothmans was criminally prosecuted for fraud and conspiracy for supporting the smuggling of cigarettes on the black market in the early 1990s. The allegation was that Rothmans encouraged smuggling in order to be able to convince Canadian governments to reduce cigarette taxes and thereby discourage that very smuggling. Rothmans pleaded guilty to the charges in 2008 and agreed to pay a fine of C$100 million, and C$450 million in payments for a decade after the initial fine.