Sampoerna said sales of full flavour machine-made kreteks, including newly launched Marlboro Filter Black, drove a 0.4 percentage point increase to 34.5 per cent of the Indonesian market in the third quarter.

Sampoerna measured its third-quarter increase against the second business quarter. The Philip Morris subsidiary reported a 30.1 per cent share of the machine-made and 38.2 per cent of the hand-rolled kretek segment for the third quarter.
Last year hand-rolled product accounted for 18.7 per cent of the total Indonesian market compared with 75.1 per cent for machine-made kreteks. White cigarettes comprised only 6.2 per cent of the domestic market. Sampoerna said the trend away from hand-rolled kreteks to machine-made products continued in the third quarter of 2016. The company added it remained committed to hand-rolled, the segment where most of its workforce of 70,000 is employed, and was taking action to stabilise the decline.
Marlboro Filter Black has been described as the first Marlboro brand kretek introduced into the Indonesian market. Sampoerna said it was launched in 25 cities in September. “While it is early in the launch process, so far we have seen encouraging results. We strongly believe that this offer will set the standard for the full-flavour machine-made kretek segment,” said Paul Janelle, Sampoerna president director.