Pouches Snapshot
The Foundation for a Smokefree World has published a snapshot on nicotine pouches, detailing a geographic footprint, company presence, and legislative overview
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by Dave Cross
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The Tobacco Transformation Index™ “measures the extent to which nicotine and tobacco companies are making material progress toward reducing the consumption of high-risk products (HRPs) and contributing to tobacco harm reduction.”
Seven of the fifteen companies logged on the Tobacco Transformation Index currently deliver nicotine pouches to markets. Confirming the relative size of the nicotine pouch market, the FSFW confirms that pouch sales ran to just 0.3% of the world tobacco market by value terms in 2021.
FSFW say that the United States and Sweden are the two leading markets for nicotine pouch sales.
“From the Index list of countries, the nicotine pouch brands are mostly present in HMICs, [high to middle income countries] except for BAT which sells Velo in LMICs [low to middle income countries] (Indonesia and Pakistan). Swedish Match, global nicotine pouch category leader, continued to increase sales in 2021 in the USA with its brand Zyn. In 2021, Altria Group acquired the remaining 20% global ownership of On! and expanded its retail distribution, which accelerated volume growth of the brand.”
The Tobacco Transformation Index covers thirty-six countries, and of those only twenty-four regulate nicotine pouches for consumer sales. Out of those twenty-four, FSFW says that just seven have a market volume that is significant – which they define as being sales of over 10 million units.
These countries are:
- USA
- Sweden
- United Kingdom
- Germany
- Ukraine
- Switzerland
- Poland
Recently, Lib Dem Lord Jones asked Lord Kamall about snus in the UK House of Lords, a tobacco-free nicotine pouch.
Lord Kamall told him: “Whilst the risks of adverse health outcomes caused by snus are far lower than smoking, snus is banned in the UK. The Government has no plans to introduce additional tobacco products to the UK market, as safer nicotine delivery products are currently available for smokers.”
Around the same time, Public Health Minister Maggie Throup told Ben Bradley: “A new Tobacco Control Plan will set out policy proposals and supporting regulatory changes to meet the Smokefree 2030 ambition. This will include new measures to improve smokers’ awareness of alternative and less harmful nicotine products such as e-cigarettes. Measures on nicotine pouches and heated tobacco products will also be included in the Plan. The Plan is due to be published later this year.”
Despite snus helping Sweden achieve record low smoking rates, Planet of the Vapes understands that the government has no intention of expanding the promotion of alternative safer nicotine products to include pouches.
References:
- The Tobacco Transformation Index™ - https://tobaccotransformationindex.org/
- The Khan review: making smoking obsolete - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-khan-review-making-smoking-obsolete
- Nicotine Pouches: Geographic Footprint, Company Presence, And Legislative Snapshot - https://www.smokefreeworld.org/nicotine-pouches-geographic-footprint-company-presence-and-legislative-snapshot/
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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