Just like previous years the sheer size of this event is astounding. Intertabac, held at Westfalenhallen Dortmund, is the world’s leading trade fair for tobacco, nicotine products and accessories. Whether you’re interested in traditional tobacco, or newer alternatives like nicotine pouches and vaping products, Intertabac has it all under one roof. This event is not open to the public and is strictly a business to business branch event .
For an advocate of balanced legislation on nicotine pouches like Pouchforum this is a unique opportunity to get a broad overview of the commercial landscape and market trends, as well as to meet likeminded professionals from different parts of the value chain. We got to see the full spread of the market, from what we consider responsible quality producers to examples of products that we frankly do not understand.
A maturing market
Our impression after having visited a great majority of the nicotine pouch producers present is that the overall quality has improved, mostly because the really poor-quality segment of white box producers seemed to be more or less absent this year. The prevalence of product offerings that are, in our view, exceedingly strong also appeared to have become more marginal.
The great majority of producers to whom we spoke were very positive about introducing regulation that would put some basic rules in place, effectively excluding products with extremely high nicotine content from the market,. There seemed to be a consensus that offering pouches over 20mg per pouch is a gimmick and even producers that are currently having them in their portfolio said that they would be happy to take them away if there was legislation put in place. Several of the manufacturers we spoke to dubbed them in the same way: “they are ruining the market”. It is our impression that the already large majority of responsible manufacturers have grown even more since last year.
This might very much be the result of regulation appearing in an increasing number of Member States, introducing nicotine caps and thus making the unregulated market smaller and smaller. Another possible explanation is what we were told from an Icelandic producer: In Iceland, a small market that has matured in very short time, the extreme products disappeared by themselves. There was simply no demand from consumers. We consider it likely that these products would never get a particularly broad consumer base and that market forces would weed them out eventually but that could take time and we continue to believe that a common legislated and scientifically supported cap would be preferable. The Hungarian government recently proposed a 17mg cap and the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) prohibits 20 mg/pouch or more.
We also saw a small number of really bad examples deviating from any standards on responsible marketing. For example, but without mentioning the name: bubblegum flavored pouches with cartoons on the very bright colored boxes containing a quantity of nicotine that we consider extreme. When showing these extreme products to retailers, the reaction was unanimous: They would not want to market this product, nor would be allowed to sell that product in their store. This, once again, shows the need, but also the appetite, for a basic, common set of European rules to prevent that consumers are confronted with the products on the outer fringes of the market.
New products in pouches
The most noticeable newcomer in the pouch segment was the nicotine-free pouches containing an amount of caffeine equivalent of a cup of coffee or up to a “well known energy drink”. Since nicotine products are not allowed to contain caffeine there will be no cross-over products but it is a development we will keep an eye on. Many producers manufacture both traditional nicotine pouches and the similar caffeine pouch but at least one company exclusively manufactures nicotine-free products and focuses on countries where nicotine pouches are not permitted.
Meeting the value chain
Pouchforum/NNPA did not just get the opportunity to meet producers. We were also invited to speak at the assembly of The European Confederation of Tobacco Retailers. An organization representing 130 000 retailers, who advocates for responsible retailing in the fight against youth usage, counterfeiting and sales of smuggled goods.
We got to present a preview of our analysis of the regulatory situation in Europe as well as a retail market overview and were pleased to see the interest and a great understanding of future challenges. At the same time there were some participants expressing sentiments that we interpreted as if they perceived that they would experience a lower knowledge base on the subject from clients or stakeholders at home. “Someone has to inform our government of this” was one of the comments made.
Pouchforum recognizes this from various markets and have previously written about that the limited product awareness among MEPs can become an issue when legislating. It seems both apparent and expected that this challenge would extend to member states that does not have a tradition with oral nicotine products but we left Dortmund convinced that even ensuring a very basic knowledge about nicotine pouches among legislators and authorities is already an important step to get an honest and fair discussion.
In summary we consider what we saw at Intertabac this year very promising and the positive reactions to the NNPA position on a nicotine cap and responsible marketing, labelling etc. as well as the lower prevalence of extreme products are indications of a quickly maturing market.