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smokeless tobacco category. “The headwind
for combustibles becomes the tailwind for
smokeless,” says David Bishop, managing
partner at Balvor.
Smokeless has been growing “consistently in
the mid-single-digits for a long time now; it is
the little train that could,” benefitting from all
the negative press surrounding combustibles,
says Bishop.
Morgan Stanley recently referred to the U.S.
moist smokeless tobacco category as “a large,
established, growing and high-margin business”
with no MSA or material legal defense costs.
Different forms of value are driving moist
smokeless tobacco’s growth—namely portion
pouches and low price, according to Balvor
research that is based on Nielsen c-store data.
“While portion pouches are growing at a faster
rate, low price is contributing more in absolute
bases—64 percent of can growth—given its
size,” says Bishop. “However portion pouches
still drive an impressive 33 percent of can
growth.”
In the tobacco outlet channel, “non-
combustibles such as moist snuff,” along with
e-cigs and e-liquids, “were by far the driving
factors attributing to our sales growth in
2013,” relays Darren Collett, owner of Collett
Enterprises, a 26-store chain of Smoker
Friendly authorized dealers. Hence, many of
the chain’s back bars were remerchandised to
highlight the moist snuff category. Additionally,
moist snuff SKUs were expanded.
Collett expects continued growth in
smokeless tobacco this year “as more smoking
restrictions push smokers to look for alternative
products.”
Similarly, Bill Grantz, owner and operator of
