Anton Rupert

Anthony Edward Rupert was the founder of cigarette maker Rothmans Tobacco International and WWF South Africa.

An obituary on Rupert, who died in 2006, states:

"'Anton Rupert, a South African industrialist and philanthropist who opposed apartheid's inhumanities and used his wealth to fund environmental and educational projects, died at the age of 89 last week. Rupert rose from humble beginnings to become one of South Africa's most successful industrialists, playing a leading role in the country's mining, tobacco, banking, media, beverage, food and health care industries. His family features in the Forbes list of the world's 500 wealthiest families with assets estimated at US$1,7 billion (about N$10,5 billion).'"

Affiliations

 * Founder, Economic Development Bank for Equatorial and Southern Africa
 * Cofounder, Urban Foundation
 * Founding Patron, Peace Parks Foundation
 * Patron, Nedbank Green Trust
 * Winner of the 2004 Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute: Four Freedoms Award
 * Recipient of the 2003 Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Medal

Anton Rupert and tobacco
Rupert started out as a chemistry lecturer who made cigarettes in his garage. He eventually built this endeavor in the 1940s into a tobacco company called Verband (short for Verband der CigarettenIndustrie), which became a tobacco and industrial conglomerate called the Rembrandt Group, which, by 1980, was the third largest corporation in South Africa. Eventually Rembrandt split into two separate companies: Remgro, an investment company with financial, mining and industrial interests, and Richemont, a Swiss-based luxury goods group. In 1995 Rembrandt and Richemont consolidated their respective tobacco interests to create Rothmans Tobacco International, which at the time was the world's fourth largest cigarette company.

By all accounts Rupert was a billionaire and a philanthropist.

Around 1976 Rupert was involved with the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company in its Project XA to create a palladium catalyst cigarette. Rupert apparently was a consultant on the project. Liggett discovered that by incorporating palladium into tobacco as a burn catalyst, a cigarette could be produced that burned more cleanly and produced, using experiments with mice, a far safer, less carcinogenic cigarette. Despite 25 years of research, development and market planning, the palladium cigarette was never commercially produced.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Rothmans Tobacco
 * Project XA
 * Project Tame
 * Gaynor Rupert
 * Frans Stroebel - personal assistant