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BUCHAREST (Romania), November 27 (SeeNews) - Tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI) said on Monday it has started production at its high-tech smoke-free products manufacturing plant in Otopeni, Romania.

The company aims to reach an annual production capacity of around 100 billion units of HeatSticks at the Otopeni factory by 2018, it said in a press release. Otopeni is located some 15 km away from Bucharest.

In July, PMI announced that it will invest 490 million euro ($584 million) to turn the cigarette factory in Otopeni into a HEETS production plant. HEETS are the tobacco units used with the electronic tobacco heating device IQOS.

The investment will create about 300 additional jobs at the Romanian facility, which currently employs approximately 670 people. "Among the factories that started the process of transformation from cigarette-making units into factories producing tobacco reserves for IQOS this year, the Otopeni plant is the first to start production. The Romanian factory will serve several markets in the European Union as well as those in Asia, namely Japan first," PMI Romania operations directir Herman Van Staalduinen said. By 2020, PMI aims to expand the Otopeni plant with another tobacco processing section.

HEETS, also branded as HeatSticks in some markets, are specially designed tobacco products that contain tobacco material and several filter sections. Heat-not-burn products, also known as heated tobacco products, only heat tobacco, thus the levels of harmful chemicals are significantly reduced compared to cigarette smoke, according to PMI.

Philip Morris International is one of the world's leading tobacco companies, with six of the world's top 15 international brands and products sold in more than 180 markets.

PMI built the factory in Otopeni in 1997, four years after opening its first office in Bucharest.

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