With the withdrawal of European and American tobacco markets and the gradual reduction of foreign e-cigarette brands doing business in Russia resulting from its war with Ukraine, it will be a blue sea for Chinese e-cigarettes to go to Russia in the next 3 years.
As Russia’s tobacco industry relies heavily on the support and investment of foreign brands, the withdrawal of international tobacco companies will cause a large shortage in the Russian tobacco market, which will lead to a sharp increase in the price of tobacco products sold in Russia, reports iGeekPhone.
By the end of 2021, there were more than 5,000 stores selling e-cigarettes in Russia, including more than 1,100 in the Moscow region.According to real estate platform DNA REALTY, the number of tobacco shops in Russia grew by at least 20 percent in 2022, with the bulk of their profits coming from e-cigarette sales.
BAT (British American Tobacco) stated that it will withdraw from the Russian and Belarusian tobacco markets in 2023. Russia is the seventh largest tobacco market of PMI, for which Philip Morris International (PMI) and its subsidiary Fimo International are also considering retaining their business in Russia.Japan Tobacco suspended investments in Russia and Imperial Brands transferred its Russian operations to a successor in Russia.
According to iGeekPhone, new tobacco products (HNBS) and e-cigarettes have great potential as alternatives to the tobacco market in Russia, where e-cigarette consumers account for 6.8% of the total number of smokers. After the United States and Europe, Russia is the world’s third largest importer of electronic nicotine delivery systems. China accounts for 90 per cent of the global market. In 2021, China’s exports to Russia reached 82.5 billion rubles. This year it could increase by 35 percent to 111 billion rubles.
