Big T Vape Moves
What is Big Tobacco up to and how involved are they in vaping?
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by Dave Cross
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Imperial Brands are responsible for Winston, Kool and Gauloises cigarettes and have been tardy in getting involved in new technologies when compared to other Big T companies. In fact, the company is on record as previously stating it wouldn’t get involved in heat-not-burn.
This changed as soon as investors and market analysts saw their half-year results.
Alicia Forry, an Investec analyst, said: "Given continued market scepticism around Imperial's trading performance and relative lack of presence in some next generation product segments, the [Final Year 2017] update should reassure. We think Imperial, if it so wished, could launch a heat-not-burn product within one year and at an easily manageable cost "
It may be a surprise to some to discover that a tobacco firm has resolutely clung to its traditional (albeit declining) markets. For those pondering the current state of the vaping market, Go Smoke Free has released findings from a recent study.
In their press release, the company states: “With the UK e-cigarette market set to grow to $5.67bn by 2021, it comes as no surprise that tobacco brands want to get a piece of the action. Go Smoke Free has taken a closer look at 73 leading e-cigarette brands to find out who really owns them.”
“We found that the key players in the tobacco industry owned subsidiaries than then owned the following nine major e-cigarette brands:
- VIP, Vapestick, 10 Motives and Vype: Owned by subsidiary company Nicoventures Holdings, which is in turn owned by British American Tobacco
- Socialites: Owned by Stada UK Holdings, which is owned by Stada Arzneimittel AG
- V2Cigs/Vapour2 UK: Owned by VMR Products, which is owned by Huabao”
But despite this, 80% of the vaping brands remain independently owned. Could a shift in focus from vaping to heat-not-burn be enough to ensure we get to keep our loved independents? Time will tell.
Photo Credit:
Graphics from https://www.gosmokefree.co.uk under Creative Commons
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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