Slim portion snus explained
A slim portion measures 34 to 35 mm by 14 mm and weighs 0.7 to 0.9 g, on the manufacturer's own published measurements. What the word does and does not tell you, and why slim and long are the same shape.
A slim portion is a snus pouch about 34 to 35 mm long and 14 mm wide, weighing 0.7 to 0.9 g — long enough to sit stably along the gum line, narrow enough not to show. Those figures are not folklore: Swedish Match measured three of its own commercial slim products and published the numbers in a patent application. What the word does not tell you is strength, moisture or whether the pouch is white, because slim describes a shape and nothing else.
Slim is the format most people now mean when they say “portion snus”, and it is also one of the least precisely defined words in the category. No regulator defines it. No standards body defines it. Each maker uses it slightly differently, and at least one major brand has quietly stopped using it altogether. What follows is what can actually be established about the format, from documents rather than marketing copy.
What a slim portion measures
The useful source here is an unlikely one. EP3087852A1, a 2016 European patent application by Swedish Match North Europe AB titled “Oral pouched product having a rectangular shape”, was filed to protect a narrower pouch than the ones the company already sold. To establish what was new about it, the applicant had to describe what already existed — and to do that it measured its own products and printed the results.
The application lists the shapes in commercial use: “Some typical shapes (length x width) of commercially available oral pouched smokeless tobacco products are, for instance, 35 mm x 20 mm, 34/35 mm x 14 mm, 33/34 mm x 18 mm, and 27/28 mm x 14 mm.” Two of those get names in the body of the document: “The format of Ref. 1 is, when sold commercially, referred to as ‘mini’. The format of Ref. 2 is, when sold commercially, referred to as ‘large’.” Ref. 1 measures 27 × 14 mm at 0.5 g; Ref. 2 measures 34 × 18 mm at 0.9 g.
Slim gets its own table. The application introduces it as “Data for ‘slim’ products sold by Swedish Match North Europe under the brand name ‘The LaB Series’, such as ‘The LaB 02’ (Ref. 3a), ‘The LaB 03 Slim White’ (Ref. 3b) and ‘The LaB 22’ (Ref 3c)”. The table that follows gives all three a maximum length of 35, 34 and 35 mm respectively, a maximum width of 14 mm for all three, and target weights of 0.9, 0.9 and 0.7 g. The printed length-to-width ratios — 2.5, 2.4 and 2.5 — check out against those numbers, which is a useful arithmetic confirmation that the single shared width cell means what it appears to mean.
One slim product is dimensioned twice. In prose: “Figure 5 illustrates the maximum length (35 mm) and the maximum width (14 mm) of the commercially available pouched snus product ‘LaB 02’ (Ref. 3a) having a product weight of 0.9 g.” And a second experiment in the same document uses a different slim as its reference: “The reference product (called Ref. 4) was the commercially available product called ‘G.3 White XSTR PSWS’ (Slim White Portion, 0.9 g, 1.8% nicotine, 46.5% water).” Its table entry reads 34 mm long, 14 mm wide, ratio 2.4.
So a slim portion, on the manufacturer’s own measurements of its own commercial products, is 34–35 mm by 14 mm, 0.7–0.9 g, with a length-to-width ratio of roughly 2.5. That is the most solid thing anyone can say about the format, and it is worth saying because the figure is routinely described as unpublished. It is published, twice, in the same document.
The name problem: slim and long are the same shape
Here is the catch. The dimensional cell a slim portion occupies — 34/35 mm by 14 mm — is the same cell the industry calls “long”. A long portion is conventionally described as having a large portion’s length at a mini portion’s width, which lands on exactly 34 × 14. And the patent calls the product sitting in that cell slim.
That is not a contradiction to resolve; it is the actual state of the vocabulary. Two marketing words, one shape, and no authority anywhere with the standing to pick between them. If you have been trying to work out whether your can is slim or long, the honest answer is that it is probably both, and that the distinction lives in the brand’s naming convention rather than in the pouch. Our piece on long portion versus regular portion snus works the same cell from the other side.
The words also stack rather than compete. Swedish Match has sold products named “Slim Large” — slim describing the width, large the mass — which makes slim a width label specifically, not a general size label. That is the most coherent reading of the whole vocabulary: mini and large are mass classes, slim and long are width-and-length descriptors, and white and original describe the surface.
The formats, side by side
| Format | Length × width | Target weight | Source of the figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mini | 27 × 14 mm | 0.5 ± 0.2 g | EP3087852A1 Table 1, “Ref. 1”, named as mini in the text |
| Slim | 34–35 × 14 mm | 0.7–0.9 g | EP3087852A1 Table 2, three named commercial slim products |
| Slim White Portion (named product) | 34 × 14 mm | 0.9 g | EP3087852A1 Table 3, “G.3 White XSTR PSWS” |
| Large / regular | 34 × 18 mm | 0.9 ± 0.2 g | EP3087852A1 Table 1, “Ref. 2”, named as large in the text |
| The narrower invention | 34 × 9 mm | 0.5 ± 0.2 g | EP3087852A1 Table 1, “Example 1” — the thing the patent was for |
| Category range | 25–40 mm long, 5–20 mm wide, 2–8 mm thick | 0.3–3.5 g | EP4018846B1 (2024) |
That last row is worth a second look, because it is the 2024 update of the same list and it has grown. The newer patent adds two shapes the 2016 version did not carry — “34 mm x 10 mm and 38 x 14 mm” — and widens the thickness range from 5–7 mm to 2–8 mm. A 34 × 10 mm commercial product is narrower than slim; a 38 × 14 is longer. The category has been stretching at both ends, and dry pouches arriving in it explain the thinner end of the thickness range.
The same document gives the only fill figure I have found anywhere: “The volume of a portion of filling material in a pouch may be in the range of from 0.5 cm 3 to 1.5 cm 3 , depending on the size of the pouch.” Note that it is explicitly size-dependent rather than a constant, which is the patent’s own way of saying that a slim and a large are not the same thing packed differently.
Slim does not mean white, and it does not mean dry
This is where the shape label gets confused with everything else, so take it from the three slim products the patent measured. It states which is which: “The product ‘The LaB 02’ is post-moisturized and the products ‘The LaB 03 Slim White’ and ‘The LaB 22’ are non-post-moisturized.” And it explains the terms: “Post-moisturized pouches are sometimes referred to as ‘original snus’. Non-post-moisturized pouched products are sometimes referred to as ‘white snus'”.
So of three slim portions: one original, two white. Their moisture contents run ~46.5%, ~50.5% and ~27.5% — and the direction cuts against the usual assumption, because the driest of the three is a white and so is the wettest. White does not predict moisture within the slim format. A fourth slim, measured by Swedish Match in a different patent, lands in between: “Commercially available pouches consisting of snus ‘Skruf fresh tranbar xtra stark white slim’ (Skruf Snus AB) were chopped to provide 3.0 g snus with a moisture content of about 43%”.
For context, the category-wide statement in the same family of documents is that “The moisture content of the final oral pouched smokeless tobacco product comprising moist or semi-dry snuff is normally within the range of from 25 to 55% w/w”, against a general taxonomy where “dry snuff has a moisture content of less than 10 wt% and moist snuff has a moisture content of above 40 wt%. Semi-dry products having between 10% to 40 wt% moisture content are also available.” A slim white at 27.5% is a semi-dry product by that taxonomy — drier than several nicotine pouches. Our piece on snus moisture levels has the fuller picture.
One thing I could not establish in either direction: nothing I opened connects pasteurisation to portion format. The word does not appear in any of the six patents I read. If you have seen a claim that slims are processed differently, it is not coming from these documents.
The fleece, which is where the fit actually comes from
The pouch material gets less attention than the shape and probably matters as much. The patent describes it plainly: “The pouch material is typically made of a nonwoven fleece (soft fabric) material, such as viscose (regenerated cellulose; viscose fibres are often referred to as viscose rayon or rayon), including an acrylic polymer that acts as binder in the nonwoven material and provides for heat-sealing of the pouches during manufacturing thereof.” And, usefully for anyone trying to picture it: “The viscose nonwoven material normally used for pouched smokeless tobacco products is similar to the fabric used in tea bags.”
Two separate Swedish Match patents independently put the conventional commercial pouch fleece at 29 g/m², which is the closest thing the category has to a default. That material is also considerably stiffer than the alternatives those patents were proposing — a bending stiffness roughly two and a half times higher — which is a measurable version of the thing people describe as a pouch feeling “papery”. More on that in our piece on pouch fleece materials.
Swedish Match’s own 2013 launch of General Tailored makes the point that fit is engineered in the fabric rather than only in the outline: “The portion pouches are softer and the fit under the lip is better, thanks to a patent pending Swedish Match technology called NatuFibe, which is an innovation based on natural plant fiber.” That release, incidentally, never uses the word slim, and gives a can at “about 16 grams, contains 20 portion pouches”.
Nobody regulates the format. One regulator thinks the word is a problem
I went looking for any legal definition of a portion format, dimension or weight, and there is none. The EU Tobacco Products Directive defines “tobacco for oral use” by what it is made of and how it is presented — “particularly those presented in sachet portions or porous sachets” — and then says nothing about size. Its only dimensional rules are about health-warning areas and packet shapes, and its packet-contents rule reaches cigarettes and roll-your-own only: “A unit packet of cigarettes shall include at least 20 cigarettes.”
The word slim does appear in the Directive, but in a recital rather than an operative article, and in a list of descriptors it treats as potentially misleading — “such as the words ‘low-tar’, ‘light’, ‘ultra-light’, ‘mild’, ‘natural’, ‘organic’, ‘without additives’, ‘without flavours’ or ‘slim'”. The binding provision that follows, Article 13, drops the word entirely. So Europe’s considered position is that “slim” might mislead on a tobacco pack, and its law does not actually prohibit it.
Sweden is the more interesting case, because it looked directly at regulating portion snus by quantity and decided against it. The preparatory work for the 2018 Tobacco Act proposed a minimum portion count — “En styckförpackning med portionsförpackat snus ska innehålla minst 20 portioner” — and explicitly considered a minimum weight instead. On portion snus specifically it concluded that “Med hänsyn till detta bedöms inte att en viktreglering avseende portionssnus är motiverad” — weight regulation of portion snus was judged unjustified. On loose snus it reasoned that a future move to very small packets was conceivable but that “I dagsläget framstår en sådan utveckling emellertid som osannolik”, and declined to introduce a minimum tobacco weight on that basis.
The result is that the only quantity a regulator anywhere has fixed for snus is a count of twenty portions in a can. Everything about the portion itself — how long, how wide, how heavy, what it may be called — is the manufacturer’s to decide.
A slim snus portion and a slim nicotine pouch are the same size
This one surprised me. ZYN’s UK size guide, published 27 July 2025 by Swedish Match North Europe — the same legal entity behind the patent above — describes its standard pouch as “ZYN Regular pouches (formerly known as ‘ZYN Slim’)” and gives its dimensions as “14mm in width and 34mm in length”, against a mini at “13mm in width and 28mm in length”.
Thirty-four by fourteen. The identical footprint to the patent’s slim snus. Two product categories, one corporate group, one shape — and the difference between them is contents and moisture, not geometry. The same page describes the regular as having a “Moist texture for a rich experience” and lists water and humectants among the things it adds over the mini.
Two cautions about that page, because it is the kind of source worth date-stamping. It contradicts itself on strengths, giving a top UK figure of 13.5 mg in one place and 16.5 mg in another, and it carries visible unedited text in several paragraphs. Its pouches-per-can figures also differ by market: the UK page says 20 for mini and 21 for regular, while the same comparison on another locale’s site says 15 and 20. Dimensions are stable across markets; can counts are not.
VELO, meanwhile, runs its entire catalogue on two formats and treats slim as the full-size one: “VELO Original nicotine pouches are available in Slim format, designed for a fit under the upper lip”, with its stronger products slim-only. That is the opposite of the intuition that slim means small. For the pouch side of this, see slim vs mini vs large pouch formats compared.
What has actually been measured about slim, and by whom
Very little, and all of it by the company that sells both the slim products and the thing being compared against them. Treat it accordingly.
The patent ran a sensory panel with slim as the control: “57 snus users normally using pouched snus products having the so-called ‘slim’ format were provided with a can of 24 pouched snus products in accordance with Example 1 to compare with their regular ‘slim’ product.” They were asked about two statements — “a) The product has a good fit under the lip. b) The product feels comfortable.” The reported result: “67% of the individuals responded that statements a) and b) applied somewhat more (i.e. alternative 4) or much more (i.e. alternative 5) on the new format in accordance with Example 1.”
Two thirds preferred a 34 × 9 mm pouch to their usual 34 × 14 mm slim on fit and comfort. That is a real, quantified format comparison, and it is also a patent applicant’s account of why its own invention is better, with no statistics, no confidence interval, and no description of the other third. Read it as a direction, not a finding.
A second experiment pitted a 0.5 g, 9 mg pouch against the 0.9 g, 16 mg slim reference and asked which felt stronger: “Each panelist was thereafter asked to rank which type of product that provided the highest perceived nicotine delivery.” The split was 13 to 10 in favour of the smaller, lower-dose pouch, from “23 answers from the test”. Thirteen out of twenty-three is not a result anyone should lean on — but the direction, that a narrower pouch with 44% less nicotine in it was perceived as delivering more, is consistent with the broader point that what you feel is not set by what the can says. That is the subject of our piece on nicotine delivery versus nicotine content.
Beyond those two experiments, I found nothing. No independent study stratifies results by portion format. The format question has been investigated almost entirely by one manufacturer, in its own patent filings.
Who slim actually suits
If you want the format that modern snus is built around, this is it. It is the default for a reason: the length gives it something to brace against in the lip pocket so it stays put, and the 14 mm width keeps it from showing. A large portion at 18 mm wide carries more material and is more noticeable; a mini at 27 mm long moves around more and runs out sooner.
If you want it invisible, mini. If you want the most material and do not care who sees it, large. If you are coming to snus from nicotine pouches, a slim portion is the same footprint you are already used to, and the thing that will feel different is the moisture and the tobacco, not the size. And if the can in your hand says “long” rather than “slim”, you are holding roughly the same pouch.
Frequently asked questions
Is a slim portion weaker than a regular one? Not by definition. Slim describes width; strength is set separately. A slim carries slightly less material than a large, so at identical concentration it holds slightly less nicotine — but makers routinely sell the same recipe across formats, and the strongest product in a range is often not the biggest one.
How many slim portions are in a can? No snus maker publishes a figure by format. The patents give 24 for one narrow product and the General Tailored release gives 20; the nicotine-pouch side varies by market even within one brand. Twenty to twenty-four is the honest range.
Is slim the same as long? Dimensionally, yes — both land on 34/35 mm by 14 mm. The difference is which word that brand chose.
Is slim the same as white? No. White describes whether the pouch was sprayed with water after it was filled. Slim products come both ways, and the patent measured one original slim and two white ones.
Does a slim portion last longer or shorter than a large? Nobody has published a format-stratified measurement, so I cannot give you a number. What is established is that a slim holds less material than a large of the same recipe, which is a reason to expect less rather than evidence of it.
Who decides what counts as slim? The manufacturer. There is no legal definition, no standard, and no regulator-set dimension anywhere.
Sources
- Swedish Match North Europe AB, EP3087852A1, “Oral pouched product having a rectangular shape” (published 02.11.2016) — the commercial shape list, the mini and large identifications, the three named slim products with their dimensions, weights and moisture contents, the “Slim White Portion” reference product, the post-moisturised/white terminology, the moisture taxonomy, the pouch material description, and both sensory experiments.
- Swedish Match North Europe AB, EP4018846B1 (granted 18.09.2024) — the updated commercial shape list, the widened thickness range, the fill-volume range, and the 10–30 pouches-per-container figure.
- Swedish Match North Europe AB, EP3232825B1 (granted 10.10.2018) — the Skruf slim white moisture measurement.
- Directive 2014/40/EU (the Tobacco Products Directive), full text as published by the European Commission — the oral-tobacco definition, Article 13, Article 14’s packet rules, and recital 27’s list of potentially misleading descriptors.
- Prop. 2017/18:156, Ny lag om tobak och liknande produkter, section 11.1 — the 20-portion minimum and the decision not to regulate portion weight.
- ZYN UK, ZYN Mini vs ZYN Regular, page dated 27 July 2025, read 17 October 2026 — the “formerly known as ‘ZYN Slim'” statement, the dimensions, the texture descriptions and the can counts.
- VELO UK, Original nicotine pouches, read 17 October 2026 — the slim-format statement and the strength-to-format mapping. Note that VELO’s own “slim-range” URL now redirects to a collection named “original”.
- Swedish Match, General introduces tailored snus, 26 April 2013 — the NatuFibe fleece statement and the can weight and count.
- What I could not establish: no regulator, standards body or statute anywhere defines a portion format or a portion dimension; no source connects pasteurisation to format; no snus maker publishes a pouches-per-can figure by format; and no independent study compares slim against large on any measured axis. General Snus’s own website is served as an application that returns no readable content, so nothing could be taken from it.
