{"id":51493,"date":"2025-11-28T19:30:39","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T11:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/?p=51493"},"modified":"2025-11-28T19:30:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T11:30:39","slug":"ktg-acquires-asf-this-year-aiming-for-the-global-nicotine-bag-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/a\/51493","title":{"rendered":"KT&#038;G acquires ASF this year, aiming for the global nicotine bag market."},"content":{"rendered":"<section><span dir=\"auto\" data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\"><span data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\"><span class=\"\" dir=\"auto\">According to Nate,<\/span><\/span><span class=\"\" dir=\"auto\">\u00a0KT&amp;G will launch its nicotine pouch business next year, considering it\u00a0<\/span><span data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\"><span class=\"\" dir=\"auto\">one of the future tobacco products<\/span><\/span><span class=\"\" dir=\"auto\">\u00a0.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"\" dir=\"auto\">KT&amp;G plans to complete its acquisition of the Nordic nicotine pouch company ASF within the year to rapidly enter the global nicotine pouch market.<\/span><\/span><\/section>\n<section><span dir=\"auto\" data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\">Previously, KT&amp;G signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Altria in September to lay the foundation for a strategic partnership in the global nicotine and non-nicotine markets, and has been working towards acquiring ASF. To this end, KT&amp;G and Altria established a special purpose company (SPC) in Sweden.<\/span><\/section>\n<section><span dir=\"auto\" data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\">KT&amp;G plans to acquire 100% of ASF's shares for 260 billion won, and then sell 49% of those shares to Altria. Therefore, KT&amp;G's final stake in the special purpose vehicle (SPV) is expected to be 51%, with an estimated investment of 160 billion won.<\/span><\/section>\n<section><span dir=\"auto\">A representative from KT&amp;G stated,\u00a0<\/span><span dir=\"auto\">\u201c\u00a0<\/span><span dir=\"auto\"><span data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\">One of our core tasks next year is<\/span>\u00a0to rapidly expand our\u00a0<strong data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\">nicotine bag business from the five Nordic countries\u2014Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland\u2014currently the main areas covered by ASF, to global regions including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and North America, following the completion of the acquisition.<\/strong><\/span><span dir=\"auto\">\u00a0According to Euromonitor data,\u00a0the global nicotine bag market reached $11.232 billion (16.46 trillion won) last year, a sevenfold increase from $1.647 billion (2.41 trillion won) in 2020. This year, the market size is projected to grow by more than 30% compared to last year, reaching $14.755 billion (21.63 trillion won).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section><span dir=\"auto\">As of last year, PMI dominated the nicotine bag market, with its Zyn brand holding a 41.1% market share. PMI acquired Swedish Matchi in 2022, becoming the world's largest nicotine bag company. Following closely behind are BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent), with its Velo brand holding a 24.6% market share, and Altria, with its On! brand holding a 13.8% market share. ASF, which KT&amp;G is seeking to acquire, held a 3.2% market share in Western Europe last year with its LOOP product. ASF's sales last year were estimated at 75 billion won\u00a0<span data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\">(approximately US$50.98 million)<\/span>\u00a0.<\/span><\/section>\n<section><span dir=\"auto\">Source:\u00a0<span data-pm-slice=\"0 0 []\">Nate<\/span><\/span><\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Nate,\u00a0KT&amp;G will launch its nicotine pouch business next year, considering it\u00a0one of the future tobacco products\u00a0.\u00a0KT&amp;G plans to complete its acquisition of the Nordic nic &hellip;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abesmoke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}