The filterless segment of the Russian cigarette market has been seeing an annual 20 per cent shrinkage over the past couple of years, experts for the industry agree.

The ovals that accounted for as much as half of the market in the mid-1990s, have reduced their share to a mere 8.5 per cent over the past ten years and are going to have to do with 2 to 4 per cent in the nearest future, writes the Russian daily Business. This is due to the uptrading trend among Russian smokers, as well as the recent shutdown of a whole number of local manufacturers, e.g. the tobacco plants of Yelets, Chelyabinsk, Samara, Astrakhan, Kursk and others due to a lack of funds and thus inability to compete with international tobacco giants. As for the multinationals, they tend to follow the market trend and expand the output of medium and higher price cigarette brands, whereas production of ovals is reduced or moved to outer facilities, BAT’s outsourcing of the most popular oval brand Prima with Pogar’s cigar and cigarette Factory (Bryansk region) being a good case in point. (vt)