Seoul.
South Korean tobacco company KT&G said Thursday it had bought a controlling
stake in Indonesian firm Trisakti to tap into one of the world's biggest
markets.
KT&G on
July 14 signed a deal to buy a 60 percent stake in Indonesia's sixth-largest
tobacco firm for 140 billion won ($132.6 million), the company said in a
statement.
Trisakti
sold three billion sticks of cigarettes last year, KT&G said, citing a confidentiality
agreement for its refusal to give more details of the deal.
The
Southeast Asian nation of some 240 million people has one of the world's
highest smoking rates with almost 70 percent of men aged over 20 indulging.
KT&G
sought to benefit from Trisakti's sales networks and production of kretek, a
clove cigarette popular among Indonesian smokers, the Maeil Business Newspaper
quoted a senior executive as saying.
"We
saw Trisakti's business potential due to its share of more than 90 percent in
the local kretek market," it quoted KT&G executive Kang Cheol-Ho as
saying in a meeting with investors on Wednesday.
KT&G, a
former state--run monopoly once known as Korea Tobacco and Ginseng, was
privatised in 2002. It has about 60 percent of South Korea's tobacco
market.
AFP
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