Tobacco

‘Cigarettes Belong in Museums,’ PMI CEO Jacek Olczak Says

Tobacco company releases whitepaper explaining its shift away from cigarettes
PMI
Photograph: Shutterstock

“Cigarettes belong in museums,” said Jacek Olczak, CEO of Philip Morris International (PMI), in the tobacco company’s recently released whitepaper: Rethink Disruption: The Rise of the Fifth Estate.

PMI, which sells cigarettes outside the United States under brands like Parliament, Virginia S. and L&M, said in its U.S. edition winter 2023/2024 whitepaper available on the company’s website, that PMI “has transformed its entire business model over the past decade, shifting its focus away from cigarettes and toward developing and responsibly commercializing smoke-free products.”

Earlier this month, PMI said in a press release that “smoke-free products accounted for approximately 37% of PMI’s total full-year 2023 net revenues. 

“More than a third of the company᾿s total net revenues come from these products, and its ambition is to be a substantially smoke-free company by 2030, with over two-thirds of its total net revenues coming from smokefree products,” PMI’s whitepaper reported.

The Marlboro cigarette makernow owns 83% of Swedish Match, which includes in its portfolio the smoke-free product Zyn.

For its first quarter of 2023 under PMI’s new ownership, Zyn nicotine pouch shipment volume reached 73.2 million cans, a growth of 46.7% over first-quarter 2022 Swedish Match shipments of 49.9 million cans, PMI said.

 PMI’s global corporate headquarters are in Stamford, Connecticut

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