Polish vaping brand may be sold world-wide
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A senior official at British American Tobacco (BAP) has singled out a Polish start-up as a potential vehicle for expanding its market abroad. Chic, a vaping company that employs 1,200 people in Poland, controls close to 70 percent of the Polish vaping market, according to the Financial Times. Kingsley Wheaton, the managing director at BAP, said, “Poland is a hub option. Chic acts as an accelerator, a catalyst for our strategy. It has given us a focal point that we can coalesce around.” The British company is considering using Poland as a production centre for export to other markets, using the Chic brand under the BAP umbrella. The company’s global chief executive recently visited Poland, where he met with the Polish firm’s founder, Milosz Dziurlaj. “It’s a perfect fit,” Dziurlaj said of BAP’s acquisition of Chic, which occurred last year. Poland is one of the biggest markets in Europe for e-cigarettes, with an estimated 1.5 million e-smokers. World-wide, e-cigarettes are a USD 1.2 billion industry.
