Swedish snus is ground air- and sun-cured tobacco blended with drinking water, salt and sodium carbonate, then heat-treated — pasteurised — rather than fermented. That one step is the whole story: Swedish Match’s own patent defines “pasteurized” as under 10,000 colony-forming units per gram, and killing the bacteria interrupts the chemistry that produces the nitrosamines fermentation generates. Everything else — the pouch, the can, the cold storage — follows from it.
Snus is unusual among nicotine products in that its manufacturing process is not a trade secret in outline, only in its numbers. The steps are published on the maker’s own site, the temperature ranges and microbiological targets are in patent filings, and the composition limits are in a Swedish food regulation and a voluntary company standard. What follows is that chain, in order, with the source for each link.
One framing to carry through: in Sweden, snus is legally a food. Not a tobacco product regulated by a health agency — a foodstuff regulated by the National Food Agency, with the drinking-water rules, the HACCP requirement and the mandatory manufacturing date that implies. That is not bureaucratic trivia. It is why the process looks the way it does.
1. The leaf, and why the curing method matters before anything else
Swedish Match states on its own snus production page (last updated 11 January 2016) that “The tobacco used in Swedish Match’s snus products is air and sun-dried and is selected to ensure that the company’s internal limits for undesired substances are met for each product”, and that snus under its standard “contains no genetically modified tobacco”.
Air- and sun-curing rather than fire-curing is a deliberate choice with a measurable consequence, and it is the first of two points in the process where nitrosamine chemistry is decided. The company’s report filed with the US Food and Drug Administration describes the raw-material side as “Swedish Match strives to maintain diversified sources of leaf tobacco to minimize reliance on any growing or sourcing area” and lists “Product integrity and traceability throughout the supply chain” as a requirement of the standard.
2. Grinding: three fractions, not one
“The tobacco is broken up, dried and fed into a grinder, where it is ground. The ground tobacco is screened into coarse, intermediate and fine meal.” The three-fraction sieve is how texture and release behaviour get built: a blend of particle sizes behaves differently from a uniform one. Swedish Match’s FDA filing puts the requirement as “Tobacco comminuted in a controlled process satisfying the requirements for specific particle size distribution”.
3. The blend: water, salt, sodium carbonate — each doing a job
From the production page: “The process begins with the tobacco flour being weighed and transported to closed blenders. Water and salt are added while the mixture is stirred.” And: “In addition to ground tobacco, the main ingredients in the preparation of snus are water, salt (ordinary cooking salt) and sodium carbonate. Additional ingredients are aromatic compounds and moisture preserving agents.”
Four ingredients, four functions:
- Water — 45–60% of the finished product, per Rutqvist et al. in Harm Reduction Journal (16 May 2011). And under Swedish law it must be drinking water: LIVSFS 2024:2 § 7 requires that the water used “ska uppfylla kraven i Livsmedelsverkets föreskrifter (LIVSFS 2022:12) om dricksvatten”.
- Salt — flavour, and preservation. Swedish Match’s patent EP 3 280 278 B1 is blunt about the mechanism: “sodium chloride lowers the water activity of the products, thus preventing micro-organisms from growing.” Rutqvist: “Sodium chloride adds flavor and prevents microbial activity.”
- Sodium carbonate — pH. Rutqvist: “Sodium carbonate helps to stabilize the pH. The target pH level in the production of most traditional snus brands is about 8.5 with some batch to batch variation due to natural variation of the raw tobacco.” EP 3 280 278 B1 has incoming tobacco at “a pH of equal to or lower than 8, such as a pH of equal to or lower than 6” and the finished composition brought to “slightly alkaline side, such as about pH 7.5 to 8.5”. Alkalinity is what shifts nicotine into its free-base form, which is the form that crosses the oral mucosa — the same lever that governs how nicotine pouches actually work.
- Humectants — glycerol or propylene glycol. Swedish Match’s pouch patent EP 3 330 191 A1: “Humectants, such as propylene glycol or glycerol, may also be added to protect the product from drying out and may also have a preservative effect since the water activity of the product will be lowered.”
Note what is not published: quantities. No source I could reach gives a weight percentage for salt, sodium carbonate or humectants in any commercial snus. Water content and pH are pinned numerically; the rest of the recipe is not.
4. Pasteurisation: the step that defines Swedish snus
The production page says only “The temperature of the snus mixture and the stirring process is computer controlled. This part of the process is known as pasteurization.” An older Swedish Match patent, US 2004/0118422 A1 (published 24 June 2004), is more candid about the history: “The batch is then heated and kept heated up for a specified time, which varies with brands…This part of the process is traditionally named ‘sweating’ but is more close to a pasteurisation process.”
The numbers are in EP 3 280 278 B1, “Method for producing a pouched smokeless tobacco product comprising heat treatment” (Swedish Match North Europe AB, priority 8 April 2015, granted 29 May 2019). The claimed range is heating the preparation “in a first heating step to a temperature within the range of from 70°C to 170°C for a time period within the range of from 10 minutes to 72 hours”, with specific pairs given as “70°C for a time period of at least 9 hours”, “90°C for a time period of at least 15 minutes” and “100°C for a time period of at least 10 minutes”. Rutqvist’s description of commercial practice is narrower: “The heating is achieved by using hot water and by injecting steam into the blenders. It involves temperatures up to 80-100 degrees centigrade during several hours.”
And here is the definition worth memorising, from the same patent: “‘pasteurized’ means less than 10 000 colony forming units (CFU) of microorganisms, such as bacteria, per gram.” The heating step is specified to “reduce the microorganism content of the initial tobacco preparation with at least 50%, such as at least 70%, at least 80%, at least 90%, at least 95% or at least 99%”.
So pasteurisation here means exactly what it means in a dairy: a microbiological target, hit with heat, expressed in CFU. Swedish Match’s own FAQ describes it as “a heat treatment, a pasteurization aimed at neutralizing microorganisms and give the snus a longer shelf life”.
One thing you cannot find out: what temperature and time any actual brand uses. In Swedish Match’s modified-risk filing to FDA, the pasteurisation parameters are redacted as confidential business information. The public record has patent ranges and a company paper’s summary — nothing more precise. Anyone telling you “snus is pasteurised at X degrees for Y hours” is guessing.
5. Why that step changes the chemistry — the nitrosamine chain
This is the part that explains why Swedish snus and American fermented moist snuff are different products chemically, and it is worth spelling out as a chain rather than a claim.
The mechanism is set out most clearly by scientists from the fermenting side of the industry. Fisher et al. in Food and Chemical Toxicology (March–April 2012): “Nitrite nitrogen is believed to be the critical nitrosating agent as levels of TSNA have been shown to correlate with nitrite in MST product…Nitrite is thought to arise from the bacterially-mediated reduction of nitrate as bacterial species present on curing tobacco and during fermentation have been shown to reduce nitrate.” Every author was a current or former employee of Altria Client Services or US Smokeless Tobacco Company, and those companies funded the work — which makes it a candid source rather than a suspect one, since it is the fermenting industry describing its own problem.
The chain: bacteria reduce nitrate to nitrite; nitrite nitrosates the tobacco alkaloids; the products are tobacco-specific nitrosamines, principally NNN and NNK, which are the carcinogens of concern in smokeless tobacco. Kill the bacteria and hold water activity down with salt, and you interrupt it at the first link. Ferment instead — deliberately cultivating microbial activity for weeks — and you are running the reaction on purpose. I should be clear that this last step is my inference from two separate sources: Fisher’s paper establishes the nitrite mechanism and says nothing about pasteurisation, and the patent establishes the CFU target and says nothing about nitrosamines. Nobody I could find joins them in one document.
What the numbers look like, with a basis warning attached. Swedish Match’s GothiaTek page reports measured NNN+NNK content of 0.35 mg/kg against its own limit of 0.95 mg/kg, both “based on snus, ‘as is'”. Stepanov’s 2018 presentation to FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee gives Swedish snus at “0.47 (0.46 – 0.48)” µg/g for NNN+NNK and nitrite at “1.1 (1.0 – 1.1)” µg/g — but that slide footnotes Swedish Match’s GothiaTek page as its source, so it corroborates nothing; it is the company’s figure travelling.
For the other side, Oldham et al. in Toxicology Reports vol 7 (2020), pp 752–758, measured US moist smokeless tobacco: “Only 2 (0.04 %) of 5008 NNN measurements for the nine smokeless tobacco products included in this paper were below the FDA’s proposed product standard of 1.0 μg/g NNN on a dry weight basis.” All authors were Altria or USSTC employees and those companies funded the work. Two cautions. Oldham states plainly “Snus products were not included as MST products in this study”, so this is not a head-to-head. And the bases differ — dry weight against as-is — which for a roughly half-water product makes the gap wider than the raw numbers suggest, not narrower. Even allowing for that, a combined NNN+NNK figure under 0.5 µg/g as-is against NNN alone above 1.0 µg/g dry weight is a real difference in the same direction every measurement points.
None of which makes snus safe, and nothing here should be read that way. It makes the fermentation step identifiable as the thing the Swedish process removed.
6. Two standards: the law, and the stricter voluntary one
Sweden’s binding rules are in LIVSFS 2024:2, the National Food Agency’s regulation on snus, snus-like products and chewing tobacco — decided 16 February 2024, published 5 March 2024, in force 1 April 2024, replacing LIVSFS 2012:6.
Section 8 sets the legal limits, and there are only four: lead above 3 mg/kg, aflatoxins B1+B2+G1+G2 combined above 0.005 mg/kg, benzo(a)pyrene above 0.003 mg/kg dry weight, and for snus and chewing tobacco, “tobaksspecifika nitrosaminer NNN och NNK (summan) i mängder över 2 mg/kg torrvikt”. Nothing on cadmium, arsenic, nickel, chromium, mercury, nitrite, NDMA, ochratoxin A or the aldehydes.
Which is where the company standard comes in. GothiaTek covers fifteen constituents, and where the two overlap it is the stricter of the pair:
| Constituent | GothiaTek limit | Measured content 2025 (95% CI) | Swedish legal limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| NNN+NNK | 0.95 mg/kg (as is) | 0.35 (0.05–0.64) | 2 mg/kg dry weight |
| Nitrite | 3.5 mg/kg | <1 (<1–1.4) | none |
| NDMA | 2.5 µg/kg | <0.6 | none |
| Benzo(a)pyrene | 1.25 µg/kg | <0.6 (<0.6–0.9) | 0.003 mg/kg dry weight |
| Aflatoxin B1+B2+G1+G2 | 2.5 µg/kg | <2.1 | 0.005 mg/kg |
| Ochratoxin A | 10 µg/kg | 3.7 (0.12–7.2) | none |
| Lead | 1.0 mg/kg | 0.14 (<0.10–0.23) | 3 mg/kg |
| Cadmium | 0.5 mg/kg | 0.27 (0.13–0.41) | none |
| Arsenic | 0.25 mg/kg | 0.06 (<0.05–0.11) | none |
| Nickel | 2.25 mg/kg | 0.92 (0.43–1.4) | none |
| Chromium | 1.5 mg/kg | 0.56 (0.20–0.91) | none |
| Mercury | 0.02 mg/kg | <0.02 | none |
| Formaldehyde | 7.5 mg/kg | 2.5 (0.36–4.7) | none |
| Acetaldehyde | 25 mg/kg | 6.3 (1.4–11.3) | none |
| Crotonaldehyde | 0.75 mg/kg | <0.10 | none |
GothiaTek’s own basis statement: “In the table below, the limits and the average contents are based on snus, ‘as is’.” Sweden’s nitrosamine and benzo(a)pyrene limits are on dry weight, so the two are not directly comparable without correcting for water — a distinction worth holding onto whenever you see snus chemistry quoted.
Two honest caveats about that table. It is a company’s voluntary standard, verified by the company, and Swedish Match says it “is the only snus company in the world to guarantee its consumers that each snus can meets the GOTHIATEK® requirements” — which also means it binds nobody else’s snus. And the page carrying it, last updated 17 January 2024, still tells readers that snus is “regulated by the Swedish National Food Agency Directive of snus and chewing tobacco (LIVSFS 2012:6)” — a regulation repealed three months later. Cite the statute, not a company’s summary of it.
Beyond limit values, LIVSFS 2024:2 reads like food law throughout. Ingredients other than tobacco and nicotine “får…inte innehålla ingredienser som utgör en risk för människors hälsa”. Additives are a whitelist in the annex. Consumer packs must carry “Nettokvantitet i gram”, “Tillverkningsdag”, a storage instruction where it affects shelf life, and the maker’s name and address — a manufacturing date, mandatory, which is the fingerprint of a perishable food. Packaging must meet food-contact requirements. Traceability must run “på alla stadier i produktions-, bearbetnings- och distributionskedjan”. And the pack must say “snus” or “tuggtobak”: “Varumärke, märkesnamn eller fantasinamn får inte användas i stället.”
7. Portioning: how the pouch is actually made
The production page describes it in one line — “The portions are measured and inserted into a cellulose fiber tube. They are then sealed and cut apart. The finished portion pouches are packed into a plastic can” — and the mechanism is in US 6,135,120 (Swedish Match Sverige AB, filed 13 June 1997, granted 24 October 2000). Moist tobacco is dosed by volume into pockets in a rotating wheel turning at “approximately 40 r.p.m.”; a levelling member with three scraper blades strikes off the excess; a tape of “heat-sealable packaging material, such as viscose fibres bonded with a thermoplastic bonding agent” is folded around each slug; a rotary welding wheel makes the transverse seal and a rotary cutter separates the pouches. Target portion weight, “preferably about 1 gram”.
The fleece is described in EP 3 280 278 B1 as “a nonwoven fleece (soft fabric) material, such as viscose (regenerated cellulose…), including an acrylic polymer that acts as binder”. It is welded, not glued — which is why the binder has to be thermoplastic, and why the pouch you put in your lip is, in Swedish law, a food-contact material.
The same patent’s worked examples give the weights: “target weight per pouched product was 0.55 g (including pouch material)” for one machine route, 1.0 g for another, and “24 pouched snus products were put in each can. Thus, the target weight of pouched products in each can was 21.6 g” — which is exactly the 24-portion, 21.6 g can the Swedish market still sells.
Then one last optional step decides whether you are holding an original or a white portion. Per EP 3 330 191 A1, pouches “may be post-moisturized after pouch formation or not post-moisturized after pouch formation”; “Non-post-moisturized pouched products are sometimes referred to as ‘white snus'”, and post-moisturised ones are “original snus”. Post-moisturising is a water spray after the pouch is sealed. The same patent concedes its trade-off: initial flavour and nicotine release “may be experienced by the consumer as unsatisfactory or even negligible…often more pronounced for non-post-moisturized” products. There is more on that in white portion vs original portion and dry vs moist pouches.
8. The can, the cold room, and why snus has a best-before date
Portion snus goes into a plastic can — “Polypropylene cans are used for portion-packed snus, which is more sensitive to drying out than loose snus” — while “Loose snus is mainly packaged in paraffin-coated cardboard cans”. Cans are closed, weighed and labelled. Then: “All ready-packaged snus is stored in cold storage rooms for a number of days before being distributed to retailers.”
Refrigeration is not squeamishness about a pasteurised product. It is about ageing. Rutqvist: “Snus ageing can be slowed by keeping the product refrigerated below 8 degrees centigrade. Ageing is more or less halted if the product is deep frozen”, and “Retailers are encouraged to keep the snus refrigerated in order to meet the criteria for the ‘best-before’ labeling.” The company’s shelf-life figures, from its FAQ: “the shelf life for moist loose snus is 14 weeks, for moist portion-packed snus 20 weeks and for the dry assortments 30 weeks”, with freezing “excellent up to one year”. There is even a thawing instruction for cardboard cans, so the condensation does not “undo the glued seams”.
So the cold chain, the manufacturing date on the can and the pasteurisation step are one system: a perishable food, dated at manufacture, held cold to keep its chemistry where it was when it left the factory.
9. Where it is made, and where it may be sold
Swedish Match’s 2019 annual report lists the sites: “Snus is produced in our factories in Kungälv, Gothenburg and Romakloster, Sweden, as well as in Silkeborg, Denmark.” Four plants, not the two usually named. The Kungälv factory was announced in a company press release of 18 September 2003 with capacity for “approximately 120 million cans of snus per annum” on an investment of “around SEK 600 million” — a historic figure, not a current one. Philip Morris International, which now owns Swedish Match, reports oral smoke-free volume only globally, at 20.7 billion units for 2025, a figure dominated by ZYN and not a snus number.
The market is small because the law made it small. Directive 2014/40/EU, Article 17, is one sentence: “Member States shall prohibit the placing on the market of tobacco for oral use, without prejudice to Article 151 of the Act of Accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden.” And Article 2(8) defines the banned thing in terms that fit snus precisely: “all tobacco products for oral use, except those intended to be inhaled or chewed, made wholly or partly of tobacco, in powder or in particulate form or in any combination of those forms, particularly those presented in sachet portions or porous sachets”. Not inhaled, not chewed, powdered, in a porous sachet — the definition is drawn around the product, and Sweden’s accession derogation is the only reason it is legal anywhere in the EU.
Frequently asked questions
Is snus fermented?
No. Swedish snus is heat-treated to a microbiological target — under 10,000 CFU per gram, per Swedish Match’s patent. Fermentation is the traditional American moist-snuff route, and it is the process that generates the nitrite behind nitrosamine formation.
What is actually in it?
Ground tobacco, water, salt, sodium carbonate, flavourings and a humectant (glycerol or propylene glycol). Swedish law requires the water to be drinking water and restricts additives to a whitelist. No manufacturer publishes the proportions.
Why does snus need refrigerating when nicotine pouches don’t?
Because snus is a perishable tobacco product that continues to age, and the maker’s own shelf-life figures are 14–30 weeks depending on type. Tobacco-free pouches are formulated for ambient stability.
What does the manufacturing date on the can mean?
It is a legal requirement. LIVSFS 2024:2 § 12 requires “Tillverkningsdag” on consumer packs, alongside net quantity in grams and a storage instruction where storage affects shelf life.
Is GothiaTek a legal standard?
No. It is Swedish Match’s own voluntary standard, verified by the company, and it binds no other producer. Where it overlaps with Swedish law it is stricter, and it covers eleven constituents Swedish law does not regulate at all.
Why is snus banned in the EU but legal in Sweden?
Article 17 of the Tobacco Products Directive bans placing tobacco for oral use on the market, expressly without prejudice to Article 151 of Sweden’s Act of Accession. Sweden negotiated the carve-out when it joined; nobody else has one.
Sources
- Swedish Match, Snus production, last updated 11 January 2016; FAQ, storage and shelf life; GOTHIATEK standard, last updated 17 January 2024, table headed “Content 2025”; Kungälv factory press release, 18 September 2003; 2019 annual report, facilities.
- Swedish Match North Europe AB, EP 3 280 278 B1, granted 29 May 2019 — heat-treatment ranges, the CFU definition of “pasteurized”, pH and moisture ranges, fleece material, pouch and can weights.
- Swedish Match North Europe AB, EP 3 330 191 A1, published 6 June 2018 — post-moisturising, white vs original portion, humectants.
- Swedish Match, US 2004/0118422 A1, published 24 June 2004 — “sweating” and pasteurisation; ingredients.
- Swedish Match Sverige AB, US 6,135,120, granted 24 October 2000 — the portioning and pouch-sealing mechanism.
- Rutqvist LE, Curvall M, Hassler T, Ringberger T, Wahlberg I, “Swedish snus and the GothiaTek standard”, Harm Reduction Journal, 16 May 2011, doi 10.1186/1477-7517-8-11. Competing interests, verbatim: “All authors are or have been employees of Swedish Match AB.”
- Fisher MT et al., “Sources of and technical approaches for the abatement of tobacco specific nitrosamine formation in moist smokeless tobacco products”, Food and Chemical Toxicology 50(3–4), March–April 2012. Funding, verbatim: “All work was funded by Altria Client Services or its subsidiary the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company.”
- Oldham MJ et al., “Variability of TSNA in U.S. Tobacco and Moist Smokeless Tobacco Products”, Toxicology Reports 7 (2020), 752–758. Funding, verbatim: “All authors were employees of Altria Client Services LLC or U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company at the time the research was done, and those companies funded the work.” Snus was excluded from the study.
- Stepanov I, “Toxic and carcinogenic constituents in Camel Snus and other U.S. smokeless tobacco products”, presentation to FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, 13–14 September 2018. NIH-funded; its Swedish snus column footnotes Swedish Match’s own GothiaTek page as the source, so it is not independent corroboration.
- Livsmedelsverket, LIVSFS 2024:2 — decided 16 February 2024, in force 1 April 2024, repealing LIVSFS 2012:6. Sections 3, 7, 8, 12, 13 and 16 quoted. Kontrollwiki article 887, last updated 13 August 2026.
- Swedish Match, GOTHIATEK report appendix to its modified-risk tobacco product application, hosted by FDA at accessdata.fda.gov — raw-material and traceability requirements; pasteurisation parameters redacted as confidential business information.
- Directive 2014/40/EU, 3 April 2014, OJ L 127/1 — Article 2(8) and Article 17.
Last verified 30 September 2026.