Rizla to Close

Welsh pot-heads are mourning their loss. They’ve stopped making Rizla papers in South Wales. Guess what – they’ve moved to Belgium.

Imperial Tobacco has announced the closure of the Rizla rolling paper factory in Treforest, South Wales with the loss of 134 jobs. The Treforest factory (near Pontypridd) produced 23 billion leaves in the last financial year. The company now plans to move its entire production to Wilrijk in Belgium, a currently underused branch plant with the capacity to produce 66 billion “leaves” annually.

According to company spokesman David Cresswell, speaking in the Western Mail, the decision was taken because the company owns the whole of it's site in Belgium but only owns part of its site in Treforest. An example of the mighty logic of the market.

By a strange coincidence the personal use of pot is de-criminalised in Belgium.

Many Welsh pot heads (like Stevie Challs - pictured in his classic 80's perm) will mourn the loss of Rizla. Whatever the merits of the fag papers themselves, it allowed them to claim their excessve consumption was a patriotic duty in support of the Welsh economy and local jobs.

Curiously, no reduction in Welsh weed consumption has yet been noted.