Welcome to Zyn City

PHILIP MORRIS INTERNATIONAL is rehabilitating nicotine's image with its wildly popular flavored pouches, embraced by celebrities, entrepreneurs and star athletes. The highly addictive stimulant is making billions, but is it good for anyone other than PMI?

- Will Yakowicz

Along the Ohio River, inside a clean, well-lit factory in Owensboro, Kentucky, dozens of gleaming stainless-steel machines, manned by employees in hair nets and safety glasses, churn out millions of tiny, pillow-shaped white fabric pouches filled with flavored pharmaceutical-grade nicotine powder. Every 15 seconds, 24 hours a day, five days a week, these automated machines fill a white plastic can the size of a hockey puck with 15 pouches.

In a few days’ time, containers of the wildly in-demand Zyn will appear in convenience stores, gas stations and bodegas across the United States. And a few days after that, the shelves will be reliably empty and retailers will be begging Philip Morris International, which owns Zyn’s manufacturer, Swedish Match, for more.

Elizabeth Leary, who has managed River’s Edge Tobacco Outlet in Owensboro for a decade, says she has never sold a nicotine product with such fervent acolytes. “Fifty percent of my customers come here for Zyn,” Leary says, explaining that she’s constantly out of stock, despite being just a few miles from the factory. “I’ve never seen a product this popular.”

By the end of 2024, Stamford, Connecticut–based PMI expects to sell as much as 580 million cans of Zyn, a 50% increase over the 385 million sold last year. Forbes estimates that Zyn sales, which PMI does not break out in public filings, generated $1.3 billion last year (about 3.7% of PMI’s $35 billion in total revenue) and could hit $1.9 billion this year. Overall, PMI’s smoke-free products (Zyn, vaporizers, its heat-not-burn device IQOS and chewing tobacco) hit $12.5 billion in sales last year, up from $9.9 billion in 2022, and account for nearly 40% of the company’s gross revenue as of the fourth quarter.