Alternative nicotine solutions are offering adult smokers increasingly powerful ways to secure their nicotine hits.
By Gaelle Walker
From vapes to pouches and heat not burn, alternative nicotine products are where it’s at, helping Scotland’s local retailers rack up valuable extra footfall, sales, and profits at a time when they need it most.
And as we head towards the summer months, categories such as nicotine pouches and vapes look set to enjoy even sunnier sales thanks to the seasonal rise in sociable occasions.
When it comes to vapes, disposables continue to blaze a trail, with the products now worth 83% of all vape sales. The disposables market saw “a remarkable increase from £141m in 2021 to £973m in 2022,” according to Imperial Tobacco, leading it to launch its new blu bar vape range earlier this year.
Now available in six flavours, “carefully chosen due to their consumer appeal,” each blu bar device contains 20mg/ml of nicotine, in 2ml of e-liquid, providing adult vapers with up to 600 puffs.
Away from disposables, Imperial says that closed-pod systems and basic open-pod systems remain “popular choices for vapers,” accounting for 17% of the UK market.
JTI UK Portfolio Brand Manager Bruce Terry offers the following advice to help retailers make more of the nicotine pouch category:
- Establish clear product visibility: give the category a clear ‘home’ by displaying nicotine pouches on a back wall solution with heated tobacco and vaping devices.
- Attract customers with an eye-catching counter display: for nicotine pouches, JTI offers POS category solutions to suit stores of all shapes and sizes, including countertop display solutions.
- Ensure consistent product availability.
- Observe seasonal trends and busy periods, for example, keep your nicotine pouch range particularly strong in the summer months when demand is highest.
- Use clear signposting to aid consumer navigation of the category.
- Stay ahead with category education: as the nicotine pouch category is rapidly growing, consumers will require guidance, including what a pouch is, how to use it, and which strengths are available.
However, despite vape’s meteoric rise in success, recent data also suggests that there’s still plenty of work to be done when it comes to educating potential new vapers about the category.
According to a new One Poll survey of 2,000 smokers commissioned by SMOORE, 62% of smokers believed vaping to be just as, or more harmful than smoking, while 42% said they only trusted vaping “a little or not at all”. In addition, 38% of those who said they lacked trust, said it could deter them from attempting to quit smoking with the help of a vape.
The report highlighted an urgent need for more and better information about vaping, to help smokers make informed decisions about switching. Trust in the category could be regained in a number of ways, the report said, such as public health campaigns promoting evidence-based facts and better education of doctors.
Retailers could also play a role, by providing adult smokers with better education about which vaping products would be most suitable to help them quit or cut down on tobacco.
The findings coincide with SMOORE establishing an independent ‘think tank’ of experts from the UK and US to lay the foundations for an industry-wide harm reduction rating system that could be communicated to consumers on product packaging.
Another alternative nicotine category which presents retailers with a key opportunity is the pouch sector, where the trends towards stronger variants and menthol flavours continue to drive sales.
JTI UK portfolio Brand Manager Bruce Terry says: “A key trend within the nicotine pouch category is the continued demand for higher nicotine strengths. A total of 83.1% of nicotine pouch sales in traditional retail in the UK are from the Extra-Strong or Strong strengths, so we advise retailers to provide a good choice of products in this segment.”
Mint-flavoured products have also soared to new heights within the category, with the market currently split 81.6% mint and 17.6% fruit.
In line with this trend, JTI added ‘Spearmint Strong’ to its Nordic Spirit portfolio back in March.
“With the category in clear growth and now worth £45.8m a year, there is a big opportunity for retailers to build on the success in the market and grow with Nordic Spirit,” Terry adds.
The success of the disposable vape category has not been lost on criminals.
Imperial Tobacco’s Head of Consumer Marketing Tom Gully says disposables have seen impressive growth over the last year and this popularity has made them an area of focus for illicit traders.
He adds: “As a result, we’re seeing an increasing number of non-compliant vape products come to market that are disguised to appear as something else to avoid detection, such as a recent seizure which saw an illicit vape product made to look like a highlighter pen. These products often feature names that are seemingly designed to appeal to children, like fidget spinners, gummy bears and ice lollies.”
Gully strongly encourages retailers to check their stock of any single use or disposable vapes for any of the following and take action without delay if they have any disposable vape products in store that:
- state that they contain nicotine or nicotine salt (nic salt) e-liquid which is over 2% (20mg/ml);
- contain more than 2ml of liquid (equates to around 600 – 700 puffs);
- do not have this exact wording: ‘This product contains nicotine which is a highly addictive substance’.
If retailers do find any products in stock that meet any of these criteria, they should remove them from sale immediately, return them to the supplier and notify the authorities of where the stock was purchased from.
