Greece investment sound

Philip Morris International is feeling vindicated by the decision it announced in March to invest €300 million in its Greek unit, according to a story by Antonis Galanopoulos and Sotiris Nikas published in the Irish Independent.

When PMI announced the investment, it was betting on an economy that had ‘cratered as the country was struggling to strike a deal with its creditors’, the story said.

But PMI and its wholly owned subsidiary, Papastratos, didn’t want to wait.

Now, with review talks completed between the government and creditors, Christos Harpantidis, Papastratos’ CEO, says the company feels vindicated.

“Our example will be followed by many others,” Harpantidis reportedly said in an interview with Bloomberg in Athens.

The investment is among the biggest such inflows for Greece since the debt crisis in 2009, and is a much-needed boost for a country that has seen its economy shrink by more than a quarter.

Papastratos has begun transforming its factory in Aspropyrgos, a suburb of Athens, into a producer of tobacco sticks to be used in PMI’s iQOS heated-tobacco product.

The plan is to use Greece as one of the PMI’s bases to produce sticks for exports to more than 30 countries by the end of 2017.