Nicotine pouch news: a pouch tax reaches the Council, Sweden dissenting — 8 November 2026

EU finance ministers meet tomorrow to take a position on a recast tobacco excise directive that would bring nicotine pouches into the European excise system for the first time while leaving Swedish snus exempt — and Sweden has put in writing that it cannot support it. Nothing has been agreed. The decision point is Monday 9 November, and the only published account of where the file stands comes from the Swedish finance ministry’s own brief to its parliament. Elsewhere: a listed pouch retailer grew volumes by a third and still lost money, and the FDA’s authorised list did not move.

Pouches enter the EU excise net on Monday, and Sweden says no

On 2 November the Swedish Ministry of Finance drew up its annotated agenda for the ECOFIN Council meeting of 9 November and deposited it with the riksdag’s EU committee on 5 November. Item three is the tobacco taxation package, and it is a decision point: “Rådet väntas ta ställning till en allmän riktlinje om dels ett nytt omarbetat” tobacco tax directive and amendments to the excise duty directive. A “general approach” is the Council’s negotiating position, not a law — but it is the step at which the shape stops being provisional.

The ministry sets out three categories of change. The first is the one that matters here: an extension of excise to further products, among them raw tobacco, e-liquids and nicotine pouches, with the document adding flatly that “nikotinpåsar. Tobakssnus är dock fortsatt undantaget.” — tobacco snus remains exempt. The second is new minimum rates for the new products and sharply raised minima for the existing ones, partly indexed to each member state’s purchasing power so the levels vary by country, and reindexed every three years. The third is a recategorisation, with separate categories for heated tobacco and waterpipe.

Compared with the Commission’s original July 2025 proposal, the minima have come down across the board, pouches included. They have not come down enough for Sweden: the level “för nikotinpåsar. Nivån för nikotinpåsar är dock fortsatt väsentligt högre än” the Swedish national rate. The compromise on the excise duty directive also halves the existing reference quantities for what counts as personal use on travellers’ imports, and adds a provision that member states which have prohibited a product may tax that product on travellers’ imports — “bestämmelse om att medlemsstater som har förbjudit en produkt, får” / “beskatta sådana produkter vid resandeinförsel. Tobakssnus omfattas inte av” the excise duty directive’s scope at all. If that survives, the countries that have banned pouch sales would acquire a taxing power over pouches carried in by travellers.

Sweden’s stated position is unusually blunt for a document of this kind. On the minimum rates: “När det gäller minimiskattenivåerna är det oacceptabelt att nikotinpåsar” / “beskattas på samma nivå som viss röktobak.” — unacceptable that pouches be taxed at the same level as some smoking tobacco, with the government adding that countries wishing to tax products according to their relative harmfulness must be able to continue doing so. It is also against the purchasing-power principle. The conclusion: “Mot den bakgrunden kan regeringen inte ställa sig bakom förslaget till allmän” riktlinje — the government cannot back the proposed general approach.

Four things this does not establish, and they matter. It is Sweden’s account of Sweden’s position, not the Council’s. It gives no figure for the proposed pouch minimum, and I could not obtain the Council compromise text — the Council’s own site refused every request. It does not establish that a general approach will be reached, since that is tomorrow’s business. And the translations above are mine; the document exists only in Swedish. The file itself is described in the Swedish explanatory memorandum FPM:2025/26:1, and the ministry records that information to the riksdag tax committee was planned for 5 November, for which I could find no committee record.

Haypp Group: pouch volumes up a third, and a loss

The clearest commercial read on pouch demand this week came from Haypp Group, the Stockholm-listed online retailer, which published its third-quarter report on Friday morning — “The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact persons set out above, at 2026-11-06 07:45 CET.”

Net sales rose 28 per cent: “Net sales increased by 28 per cent to SEK 1,220.9mn (952.1). Organic growth amounted to 26 per cent.” “The nicotine pouch category grew by 33 per cent in volume during the quarter.” and by 39 per cent over nine months. “Active consumers were 682 thousand (574) during the quarter.” In the company’s growth markets — the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Switzerland — “Nicotine pouch volume grew 63 per cent in the quarter”, with the segment narrative putting US and UK year-on-year pouch growth above 90 per cent, which is what the chief executive’s “Nicotine pouch volume in the key US and UK markets increased over 90 per cent year-over-year.” refers to.

And yet: “EBITDA amounted to SEK 2.8mn (35.8), corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 0.2 per cent (3.8).” The quarter produced a net loss of SEK 43.2mn against a small profit a year earlier, attributed to marketing, personnel and the Saudi Arabian investment, plus SEK 23.5mn provisioned against a US dispute. Volume growth of this order, bought at this price, is the report’s most interesting number.

Two caveats. These are one retailer’s volumes through its own e-commerce brands, not market data. And the report discloses, after the balance sheet date, that Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court declined leave to appeal in a case on age verification at collection of tobacco and nicotine products from parcel lockers, after which a Swedish subsidiary stopped selling through one of its sites from 19 October and the group began rolling out biometric age verification on the others. I am reporting that as the company’s characterisation only: the court’s own decision and case number were not obtainable, and its site is not reachable from here.

A new paper puts pouches among the most-used US products — on data from 2022

PLOS One published a mapping of American tobacco use patterns on 3 November, drawn from the seventh wave of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study. It identifies “Among adults, we identified 183 distinct patterns of single and combined use, representing 24.7% of US adults overall; single-, dual-, and poly-use accounted for 17.2%, 5.5%, and 2.0%, respectively.” Pouches appear high in the ranking: “the most commonly used products were e-cigarettes, cigarettes, cigars, nicotine pouches, unspecified other tobacco, and snus (overall use).” The authors added a dedicated pouch analysis for a stated reason — “Given the rapid increase in nicotine pouch use among both youth and adults, we also conducted a secondary analysis to examine use patterns among current nicotine pouch users.”

The caveat belongs in the same breath as the finding, not in a footnote. The paper itself says the data are “Wave 7 data (collected between January 2022 and April 2023) from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study, including 10,453 youth and 29,645 adults.” That is a picture of American use three to four years old, published now, and the US pouch market has grown several times over since. The funding is public money with no industry involvement: “Research reported in this publication was supported by the FDA and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the NIH under award number K01DA058408 (PI: SX).”

And what did not happen

The FDA’s authorised list did not move. It still reads “There are 67 nicotine pouch products authorized by the FDA. These are the only nicotine pouch products that may be lawfully sold in the United States.” from three manufacturers, and it still says “This list is up to date.” with a content date of 30 October. The page licenses that reading itself: FDA “intends to update” the list “with new products the day of a nicotine pouch authorization. This is the first place any newly authorized nicotine pouches will be listed.” One Center for Tobacco Products warning letter was posted this week, to an e-cigarette retailer, not a pouch seller.

Britain made no new tobacco instrument. Of the nine 2026 instruments with “tobacco” in the title, the most recent carries a creation date of 16 October — the Welsh age-of-sale notice regulations. Nothing under the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 was made or laid between 2 and 8 November. Worth noting separately: the Nicotine Approval Scheme consultation that opened on 28 October does not mention pouches once in its detailed design document. Its stated purpose is to “place controls on high-strength nicotine supply chains to protect Vaping Products Duty revenue”. Taken with last week’s Budget, Britain’s newest nicotine machinery continues to leave pouches alone.

Sweden’s parliament tabled nothing new. A keyword sweep of riksdag documents for the week returns the two ECOFIN papers and nothing else.

And two companies I could not source at all. Japan Tobacco’s reporting calendar makes an early-November nine-month release likely, and BAT is a standing presence in this category — but both corporate sites refused every request from here, so if either said anything about pouches this week, I cannot cite it and will not report it secondhand.

What is next

• Monday 9 November — ECOFIN takes a position on a general approach on the recast tobacco excise directive. Sweden has said it will not support it. One member state’s opposition does not block a qualified majority.
• Wednesday 20 January 2027 — the UK Nicotine Approval Scheme consultation closes, at “11:59pm on 20 January 2027”. Pouches are outside its scope as drafted, which makes it a consultation worth responding to if you think they should be inside it.
• Wednesday 10 February 2027 — Haypp Group’s fourth-quarter report, the next read on whether a third more volume can be bought at less cost.

Last week’s issue, covering the Velo authorisation and Britain’s age-of-sale commencement, is here from 1 November. Country-by-country positions, including the markets that would gain a taxing power under the travellers’ imports provision above, are tracked in the global nicotine pouch regulation tracker.

Sources

• Finansdepartementet, Kommenterad dagordning: Ekofinrådets möte den 9 november 2026, dated 2 November 2026, deposited with the riksdag 5 November 2026; and the preliminary agenda for the same meeting.
• Haypp Group AB (publ), Interim report Q3: sustained momentum, 6 November 2026, and the full interim report.
• Xie S, et al. Patterns of tobacco product single and co-use — findings from the PATH wave 7 data. PLOS One, 3 November 2026. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0360653.
• US Food and Drug Administration, Nicotine Pouch Products Authorized by the FDA, content current as of 30 October 2026, read 8 November 2026.
• legislation.gov.uk, all 2026 instruments with “tobacco” in the title, read 8 November 2026.
• Department of Health and Social Care, Nicotine Approval Scheme consultation, opened 28 October 2026.

Nicotine is addictive. No tobacco or nicotine product is safe, and completely stopping is the lowest-risk option. This site is for adults who already use nicotine — 21+ in the United States, 18+ or your local legal age elsewhere. Nothing here is medical advice.