Heated, Oral Tobacco Output Increases in Russia
The treat of nationalization continues to loom over Western tobacco companies still operating in Russia. Photo: Delovoy Petersburg
Cigarette manufacturers in Russia produced 182 billion cigarettes in 2023, reports CRPT, which operates the Honest Mark product labeling system. Accounting for 87.7 percent of domestic tobacco production, cigarette manufacturing was largely stable (up 1 percent) from the previous year.
Production of heated tobacco products, by contrast, jumped 26 percent to 1 billion packs, claiming 10 percent of the Russian tobacco market in 2023. Output of oral tobacco products more than doubled to over 5.8 million. Production of cigarillos increased to 61.5 million packs in 2023 from 32 million in 2022.
The only categories of tobacco products whose production decreased in 2022-2023 were cigars and smoking tobacco, according to CRPT. The production of cigars fell by 38 percent to 4.2 million packs, and smoking tobacco decreased by 8 percent to 1.3 million packs.
Domestic tobacco companies manufactured 96.6 percent of the nicotine products on the Russian market in 2023.
Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, leading international nicotine companies, such as British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands have sold their operations to domestic investors.
The multinationals that remain are finding it increasingly difficulty to extract themselves from the market due to onerous government restrictions on such transactions.