The Macon Telegraph, Georgia via NewsEdge Corporation : Nov. 11--MACON, Ga.--A year after the nation's tobacco companies settled a multibillion-dollar lawsuit with the federal government, billions of cigarettes continue to roll off lines at Brown & Willia

"That's one of the biggest and best plants in the world," Mark Smith, a spokesman for the company, said Tuesday. "We remain very confident in our future." Earlier this year, plant workers began taking an additional day off each month, said Jim Teague, a spokesman for the local cigarette-manufacturing plant. That means that one day a month, when employees would normally work, they are off without pay, he said. There are no other plans to change the plant's workload, Teague said. " That is driven by the overall market," he said. "Other companies have chosen to lay people off. We have chosen to manage our way through this." Cigarettes for all Brown & Williamson brands are manufactured at the 200-acre site in the Ocmulgee Industrial Park. The plant employs more than 2,800 people and runs 24 hours a day. Brown & Williamson, the nation's third largest tobacco manufacturer after Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, produces cigarettes under the brands Kool, GPC, Carlton, Capri, Misty, Tareyton, Barclay, Kent, Pall Mall and Lucky Strike. The Macon operation has the capacity to produce more than 400 million cigarettes a day and 150 billion a year.

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