LONDON (ShareCast) - Almost 2,500 jobs are to go at Imperial Tobacco as the cigarette maker restructures its business following the acquisition of Franco-Spanish rival Altadis for £11.3bn in January.

The closure of six factories and reorganisation of other sites will see around 6% of the Lambert & Butler group’s 40,000 workforce lose their jobs over the next three years.

The axe will fall heaviest in France where almost a quarter of the 4,700 people employed there face the chop.

Closing down the Bristol factory where classic and castella cigars are made will result in the loss of all 75 jobs, while 210 will go at the Nottingham cigarette factory during its reorgainsation.

Elsewhere, 830 jobs will be lost in Spain, 250 in Germany, 200 in Poland and 100 in Russia.

Bristol-based Imperial, the world’s fourth largest tobacco company, is targeting annual operating efficiencies of some €300m by the end of the year to 30 September 2010, rising to €400m by the end of 2012.

It estimates the one-off cash cost of achieving these efficiencies will be about €600m.

Over 97% of shareholders backed the firm’s £4.9bn one-for-two rights issue last week.

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