Cigarettes registered a slight increase in volume sales in 2021, after registering a severe decline in 2020, prompted by health authorities warning that smokers were more susceptible to serious illness from COVID-19. However, with continued remote working leading to more opportunities to smoke, volume sales crept up again in 2021.
British American Tobacco Caribbean & Central America and Tabacalera Costarricense (Philip Morris) continued to have almost a duopoly, with volume sales almost being equal between them. Tabacalera Costarricense offers the two leading brands, Chesterfield Red and Chesterfield Blue, with British American Tobacco’s leading brand being Pall Mall, with its more expensive Viceroy brand losing value share.
Contraband continued to dampen volume sales of legal cigarettes and accounted for nearly a third of volume sales in 2021 and this figure has been consistently rising over the review period. Commonly found illicit brands include the Chinese brand, Gold City.
Cigarettes will register further volume decline over the forecast period, as smoking prevalence continues to fall, partly due to increased tobacco controls, which are already very strict. Plain packaging, as well as increasing the size of health warnings on packages from 50% to 80% are among new proposals being considered.
Many smokers are switching to vaping as they perceive it to be less harmful. However, vaping will be less appealing over the forecast period, as from January 2022, vaping will also be prohibited, along with smoking, in public spaces.
Cigarettes are a mature product area, with little room for growth, as smoking prevalence continues to fall. The one area that is seeing innovation is flavoured cigarettes and flavoured cigarettes will drive growth over the forecast period, mainly driven by a new generation of smokers, and also female smokers.
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Cigarettes
RETAIL SALES OF DUTY PAID CIGARETTES The definition of cigarettes for the purposes of this study is duty-paid, machine manufactured white-stick products. This does not exclude brands of cigarettes that do not use white paper but it is designed to exclude the volume of non-machine manufactured products such as bidis/beedis (India) and papirosy (Russia), and other smoking products made with tobacco but that either do not resemble cigarettes as recognised in the US or Europe, or those that are not machine manufactured. The exclusion of these products is intended to give a more accurate picture of the "true" market for cigarettes and cigars which has been distorted in official statistics and published reports because of the inclusion of hybrid products. NB Please note that due to its central importance and integration into the industry mainstream, Indonesia’s market data does include hand-rolled kreteks DUTY-FREE sales are excluded from retail sales, as are herbal cigarettes. ILLICIT TRADE CIGARETTES Not included in retail sales, but split out separately in volume terms only. Defined as non-duty paid cigarettes (includes smuggled & counterfeit/fake products combined). Legitimate cross-border sales are considered duty-paid. Sales arising from a foreign national purchasing cheaper cigarettes in bulk in a neighbouring country for personal use and exported back are attributed to the country where the purchase is made (e.g. bulk cigarette sales by British nationals in France are attributed to France).
See All of Our DefinitionsThis report originates from Passport, our Cigarettes research and analysis database.
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