British American Tobacco in Vietnam: What It Owns and Sells
British American Tobacco has operated in Vietnam since October 1994, and its Vietnamese business is cigarettes and tobacco leaf — not nicotine pouches. BAT also owns VELO, one of the two brands that dominate the global pouch category, the other being ZYN, which Philip Morris International acquired with Swedish Match in 2022. Neither brand has official distribution in Vietnam — there is no formal retail channel for pouches in the country at all — which is why those two facts sit further apart than they look.
This page is market reporting. It sells nothing, and where it quotes a number it says which company published it and when, because in this industry almost every headline figure originates with one of the two companies competing over it.
What BAT actually does in Vietnam
According to BAT's own Vietnamese website, read on 6 August 2026, the group started operations in the country in October 1994 and now runs three distinct things here.
There is a representative office of BAT Marketing Singapore Pte Ltd, established in Ho Chi Minh City in 2001 and relocated in 2024 to the Hallmark Building in Thu Thiem. There is British American Tobacco–Vinataba, a joint venture formed in 2001 with the state-owned Vietnam National Tobacco Corporation, described by BAT as a US$65 million company whose business is growing and processing tobacco; its cut-rag processing plant sits in Dong Nai province, and BAT calls it one of its most modern such factories anywhere. And there is VINA-BAT JV Co., formed in 2014 to manufacture cigarettes.
The company lists eight brands in Vietnam: State Express 555, Dunhill, Kent, Craven "A", White Horse, 7 Diamonds, Everest and Virginia Gold. All eight are cigarettes. We do not sell any of them — VinaPouches does not sell cigarettes at all, and none of BAT's Vietnamese entities supplies us with anything. What is conspicuous about that list for anyone arriving from a pouch search is the omission: VELO is not on it.
BAT owns VELO, and VELO is not a Vietnamese product
BAT introduced Lyft as an oral nicotine pouch in 2018. In November 2019 the group consolidated its non-combustible portfolio into three global brands — Vuse for vapour, glo for heated tobacco and Velo for what BAT calls modern oral — and the pouch line became VELO at that point. BAT's brand page describes VELO as originating in Sweden and says it is now sold in 49 markets; that page carries no date, so treat the number as current-ish rather than pinned.
Vietnam is not one of those markets in any official sense. VELO reaches this country the same way every other brand in our catalogue does: through European distributors and ordinary import, not through BAT Vietnam, and not through a local distribution agreement. That has a consequence worth understanding — which VELO flavours and formats are available here is decided by what European wholesale has, not by anything BAT plans for Vietnam.
The other half: PMI, Swedish Match and ZYN
ZYN was created by Swedish Match, the Swedish oral tobacco company. Philip Morris International bid for Swedish Match in 2022, settled its acquisition of a controlling interest on 11 November 2022, and reached full ownership in February 2023. ZYN has been a Philip Morris brand ever since.
Philip Morris has a mirror-image arrangement to BAT's inside Vietnam: a joint venture with the same state corporation, Vinataba–Philip Morris Limited, which manufactures Marlboro locally. As with BAT, that Vietnamese operation is a cigarette business and has nothing to do with pouches.
How the two split the category, in their own numbers
Both companies report the pouch category in their own terms, on their own definitions of "top markets", which makes a clean head-to-head impossible. What can be reported honestly is what each said, and when.
Philip Morris, in its 2025 fourth-quarter and full-year results published in February 2026, reported ZYN shipments of 794 million cans in the United States during 2025, up 37% on the previous year, said ZYN was sold in 55 markets, and put the brand at around two-thirds of the American category by value.
BAT, in its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2025 announced on 12 February 2026, reported New Categories revenue of £3,621 million, up 5.5%, with contribution from that segment up 77.1% to £442 million, and said its Velo Plus line had reached second position in volume and value share. It reported adding 4.7 million consumers of its Smokeless brands, to 34.1 million. In its half-year report to 30 June 2026, announced on 30 July 2026, BAT reported Modern Oral revenue up 65.9% and a 39.2% volume share in its top markets, up 8.4 percentage points against full-year 2025, with Smokeless consumers reaching 35 million and Smokeless products accounting for 19.8% of group revenue.
Read those side by side and the shape is clear enough without anyone's estimate on top: ZYN holds the larger installed position, particularly in the United States, and VELO is growing off a smaller base at a faster rate. Every figure in the two paragraphs above is a company reporting on its own performance, which is the only reason to state the source and the date next to each one.
What that duopoly means for what reaches Vietnam
Here is where a global picture and a Vietnamese shelf stop matching, and it is the most useful thing on this page.
Counted from our catalogue on 6 August 2026, we list 682 products across 49 brands. VELO is the largest single range at 46 products and ZYN the second at 42. Together that is 88 products, just under 13% of the catalogue. The other 47 brands — LOOP at 38, CUBA at 31, XQS at 28 and the rest — belong to neither company.
A market with no official distribution from either multinational looks far less concentrated than the revenue reports suggest, because the channel that supplies it is European wholesale rather than a corporate rollout plan. That cuts both ways. It is why a buyer in Ho Chi Minh City can reach dozens of small Scandinavian and European makers that a buyer in a market with formal distribution largely cannot. It is also why availability of any particular VELO or ZYN item here is less predictable than in a market either company actually serves, and why the version of a can sold in Europe is not necessarily the version sold under the same name in the United States — a difference covered in our ZYN US-versus-EU piece.
The one corporate difference you can feel as a buyer
Ownership is abstract. Labelling policy is not, and the two companies have opposite ones.
ZYN publishes a per-pouch nicotine figure on 41 of the 42 products we list, and grades its range numerically. VELO publishes one on 3 of its 46 — 4mg, 6mg and 14mg — and otherwise labels strength with words like Strong and MAX. Four of the VELO products we carry contain no nicotine at all.
That is a decision made in a corporate marketing department, and it lands directly on someone comparing two tins in Hanoi: with one brand you can rank the range by milligrams, and with the other you cannot. It is also why our VELO product pages show no dose where VELO states none, rather than estimating one. The same discipline applies to the brands that print a figure in milligrams per gram — a concentration, not a dose — which cannot be converted into a per-pouch number without a pouch weight nobody publishes. Our VELO review and the strength guide go through both problems.
What we are not going to repeat
Both companies publish research and marketing material about the comparative risk profile of their own products, and both frame their corporate strategy around the growth of their non-combustible segments. Those are their statements, made in their own commercial interest, and this page does not restate any of them as fact in either direction. VinaPouches makes no claim about the comparative health risk of anything it sells.
The one place a regulator has adjudicated any of this is the United States, where the FDA granted modified risk orders to Swedish Match for a specific set of ZYN products in June 2026. That order names products, a company and a country, it has no force in Vietnam, and we do not print its wording on our pages. It is reported in full in our piece on the FDA order.
Where Vietnamese law sits on all of this
Vietnamese law names e-cigarettes and heated tobacco, and does not name oral nicotine pouches. Resolution 173/2024/QH15, adopted 30 November 2024 and applying from 1 January 2025, prohibits the production, trade, import, storage, transport and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products — which covers BAT's Vuse and glo and Philip Morris's IQOS, and does not list oral pouches. Decree 371/2025/ND-CP set the penalties from 31 December 2025 at 3,000,000–5,000,000 VND for an individual using a prohibited product, with confiscation on top. The Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms No. 09/2012/QH13 defines a tobacco product by reference to tobacco material, and a tobacco-free pouch contains none.
That is changing. The Ministry of Health's draft amendment dated 20 July 2026 adds a category of "other new tobacco products" and does name nicotine pouches in it, and Resolution 11/2026/UBTVQH16 moved the draft to the National Assembly session in October 2026, with the amended law reported as effective 1 July 2027. If that passes as drafted, the corporate question this article describes becomes largely academic here. The standing explainer is here, and what it might mean is discussed in the future-of-nicotine piece.
Nicotine is an addictive substance and raises heart rate and blood pressure. These products are for adults 18 and over who already use nicotine, and are not for anyone under 18, anyone who does not already use nicotine, or anyone pregnant or breastfeeding. Keep away from children and pets — a used pouch still contains nicotine.
General information, not legal, medical or investment advice. Corporate facts are cited from British American Tobacco's and Philip Morris International's own published statements on the dates given, and figures reported by a company about its own performance are labelled as such. Catalogue figures counted from the VinaPouches catalogue on 6 August 2026. VinaPouches is a retailer, not affiliated with either company, and makes no claim about the comparative health risk of anything it sells. Regulation of oral nicotine products in Vietnam is changing and should be re-checked after the National Assembly session of October 2026. Last reviewed: 06/08/2026.
Frequently asked questions
A nicotine pouch is a small white pouch of nicotine, plant fibre, flavouring and water that you park between your upper lip and gum for 15 to 60 minutes. No tobacco, no smoke, no vapour, no spitting. Nicotine crosses the gum lining rather than the lungs, so nothing is inhaled and nothing is burnt. A pouch leaves no smell on your hands, clothes or breath, which is why they are used at a desk, on a motorbike, in a meeting or on a flight where smoking is impossible. Pouches come in strengths from 3mg to 25mg and in slim, mini and regular formats.
Swedish snus is made from ground tobacco leaf and is brown; nicotine pouches are white and use plant fibre in place of tobacco. Both sit under the lip. Everything VinaPouches sells is the white, tobacco-free kind. The practical differences: white pouches do not stain teeth the way brown snus can, they release flavour rather than tobacco taste, and they produce far less saliva. Several brands in our catalog — Skruf, Lundgrens, Siberia — are old Swedish snus houses that now also make the white tobacco-free version. When a heritage brand appears here, it is their white line.
No. Every pouch VinaPouches sells is tobacco-free: nicotine, plant-based fibre (usually eucalyptus or pine cellulose), food-grade flavouring, sweetener and water. No tobacco leaf, dust or stem is used at any stage. Tobacco-free does not mean nicotine-free. The nicotine in a white pouch is still nicotine and is still addictive; it is simply not delivered on a bed of tobacco. If you want a product with no nicotine at all, look at the Zero and Energy lines.
VinaPouches sells only to adults aged 18 and over. Age is confirmed at the age gate on entry and again at checkout, and couriers may ask for ID on delivery. Orders that fail an age check are cancelled. Nicotine pouches are not for people who do not already use nicotine, at any age. Buying on behalf of someone under 18 is a breach of our terms and will close the account.
Oral nicotine pouches are not named in Vietnam's ban on e-cigarettes and heated tobacco (Resolution 173/2024/QH15, in force from 1 January 2025), and no Vietnamese statute currently in force names them either way. Resolution 173/2024/QH15, passed by the National Assembly on 30 November 2024, prohibits the production, trade, import, storage, transport and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products from 1 January 2025. Its scope is written around those two categories. Oral nicotine pouches — pouches placed under the lip, containing no tobacco and involving no heating or aerosol — are a separate product category and are not listed. A draft amendment to the Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms, which would bring oral nicotine products including `túi ngậm nicotine` into a defined regulatory category, has been under preparation and is expected to reach a National Assembly vote around October 2026. If it passes, this answer changes. VinaPouches will update this entry and its review date within seven days of any change in the published text of the law. The Ministry of Health's draft amendment dated 20 July 2026 names túi ngậm nicotine explicitly and proposes a ban from 1 January 2027; Resolution 11/2026/UBTVQH16 scheduled it for the October 2026 National Assembly session.