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We are BAT

We are a leading, multi-category consumer goods business. Our purpose is to create A Better Tomorrow™ with a vision to Build a Smokeless World – a world where smokers make a ‘Switch to Better’ by migrating from cigarettes to smokeless alternatives.

We hope 'We Are BAT' helps you to understand who we really are: our clear purpose, how we operate and what it's like to work for our company.

We are a leading global company

Global presence and around 50,000 employees

Founded in 1902, BAT is a leading consumer goods business. Our corporate purpose is to create A Better Tomorrow™. For us, this means Building a Smokeless World and becoming a predominantly smokeless business by 2035. By providing smokers with access to smokeless products, we can drive forward Tobacco Harm Reduction and, ultimately, make cigarettes a thing of the past.

We are a leading FTSE company with truly international credentials. Spread across six continents, our regions are the United States of America; Americas & Europe (AME); and Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA).

There are about 50,000 BAT people worldwide.

Many of us are based in offices, factories, tech hubs and R&D centres. Lots of us, though, also spend our time out on the road, helping and advising tobacco farmers and the retailers who sell our products; both valued partners who have always played a major part in our success.

Our heritage – and the foundation of our success – is in cigarettes. However, we recognise the world is changing. We have a clear corporate purpose to create A Better Tomorrow™ by Building a Smokeless World. A world where smokers have migrated from cigarettes to smokeless alternatives. A world where smokers make a ‘Switch to Better.

Our ambition is to have 50 million consumers of our Non-Combustible products by 2030 and to accelerate the growth of our New Category revenues at a faster rate than our total revenue, reaching £5billion in 2025, and to become a predominantly smokeless business, with 50% of our revenue in Non-Combustibles by 2035.

Put simply, we believe in a world where, ultimately, cigarettes have become a thing of the past.

Harm reduction

This entails:

  • Committing to providing adult consumers with a wide range of smokeless products
  • Continuing to be clear that cigarettes pose serious health risks, and the only way to avoid these risks is not to start or to quit
  • Actively encouraging those who otherwise continue to smoke, to switch completely to scientifically-substantiated, smokeless alternatives
  • Tracking and sharing progress of our transformation

We are a multi-category business

Heating products feature among our portfolio of smokeless products

BAT is a consumer-focussed business operating internationally. Our multi-category approach means we are well placed to provide adult consumers with products designed for every mood and moment. Our portfolio reflects our commitment to meeting the evolving and varied needs of today’s adult consumers.

The tobacco and nicotine industry has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. Increasing numbers of adult smokers are migrating to smokeless products like Vapour Products , Heated Products and Modern Oral nicotine pouches . We have played a significant part in this industry transformation.

Our multi-category strategy is set to meet the evolving preferences of adult consumers around the world and deliver business growth. We have built a portfolio of three powerful smokeless product brands: Vuse , glo and Velo , which are delivering more than £3bn of revenue in just a decade.

To accelerate the next phase of our transformation journey we are now committed to Building a Smokeless World. We will deploy our global multi-category portfolio to actively encourage smokers to ‘Switch to Better' smokeless alternatives while continuing to seek long-term opportunities Beyond Nicotine in Wellbeing and Stimulation.

We are shaping the future

Always innovating, experimenting and delivering new Tobacco Harm Reduction solutions

We’re investing billions in R&D, rolling out new products to new markets and transforming ourselves as part of our purpose to build A Better Tomorrow™.

We’ve been on this journey for a long time. We set an ambition to satisfy consumer moments in tobacco and beyond back in 2012 and launched our first vapour product not long after.

Since then, we have invested significant sums in research and development of New Categories of smokeless products (almost £350m every year), including Vapour, Heated Tobacco and Modern Oral products.

We have become a multi-category tobacco and nicotine products business with our New Categories embedded into the heart of our company alongside our cigarette operations.

To realise their true potential, we need to make New Category products available to adult smokers in as many markets as possible. By the end of 2023, our Vapour products, Heated Products, and Modern Oral products are available in 63, 31 and 34 markets respectively.

To achieve a step-change in New Categories, we are building new capabilities around the world focused on science, innovation and digital information.

As consumer preferences and technologies evolve, we stay ahead of the curve through our digital hubs, innovation centres and further development of our world-class R&D laboratories.

We are also leveraging the expertise of our external partners and are looking forward to exciting results from our corporate venturing initiative, Btomorrow Ventures.

The progress we have already made gives us confidence in achieving our ambitions for the future – to have 50 million consumers of our Non-Combustible products by 2030; to accelerate the growth of our New Category revenues at a faster rate than our total revenue, reaching £5 billion in 2025; and become a predominantly smokeless business by 2035.

Building A Better Tomorrow™ is larger than BAT. Lasting change will only be achieved by a combination of similar commitments from companies like us and the support of regulators, public health bodies, politicians, media and academics.

Our role is to make available high-quality products that are researched and produced to high standards and promoted responsibly. We must also encourage those who otherwise continue to smoke to switch completely to scientifically substantiated, smokeless alternatives.

We are responsible

Committed to operating to the highest standards of corporate conduct and transparency

Sustainability is at the heart of our transformation. It is a core component of our corporate strategy.

In today’s complex and challenging world, the policies, principles and programmes that guide how we work are more important than ever.

Just as we are committed to making a step change in our New Categories performance, we are also committed to making a step change in our sustainability ambition.

Supporting our ambition to build A Better Tomorrow™, we have a number of stretching targets that we are confident will accelerate our transformation and will benefit society.

Sustainable business

This entails:

  • Increasing our consumers of Non-Combustible products to 50 million by 2030
  • Achieving Net Zero GHG emission by 2050
  • Making 100% packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025
  • Increase the proportion of women in Management roles to 45% by 2025

Responsible marketing plays an important role in growing our business, and we ensure that ours is only directed at adult consumers. We support retailers with proof-of-age schemes and awareness training and engage with governments and call for minimum age laws if none already exist.

And as the industry changes, we have expanded our guidelines on youth access prevention to cover new category products too.

Making agriculture more sustainable is one of our key aims. As part of the industry-wide Sustainable Tobacco Programme , we’re helping leaf suppliers and our contracted farmers with issues such as water and soil management, use of agrochemicals and preventing child labour.

View our Sustainability goals for more information.

We are partners

Working with others to drive progress

We pride ourselves on the strength of our relationships with our contracted farmers, suppliers and retailers. They are crucial business partners who are vital to our success and the sustainability of our company.

We work with over 91,000 farmers contracted through BAT leaf operations worldwide and invest millions of pounds each year in leaf R&D. This helps us to develop new and innovative farming technologies and techniques, as well as safer, more efficient ways of working. Our network of field technicians regularly visit farms to advise and train farmers, helping them grow tobacco and other crops, sustainably and successfully.

Of course, a global agricultural supply chain can be vulnerable to human rights issues such as child labour. Understanding these challenges – and finding solutions – is critical.

Through our involvement with the industry-wide Sustainable Tobacco Programme , we review all our tobacco leaf suppliers. This is an important way of ensuring high standards are maintained and helps drive continuous improvements.

Our own programme, THRIVE , allows us to take a more holistic approach to identifying and addressing long-term risks in agriculture, such as rural poverty and an ageing farming population.

These programmes also help us forge new alliances with many different stakeholders, ranging from a partnership in Brazil to help train young farmers, to work in Kenya to plant more trees and rehabilitate barren land.

We are also proud to be a founding member of the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing (ECLT) Foundation, which works with governments, tobacco companies and local communities to tackle child labour.

Alongside this, we work with millions of small, independent retailers who in turn use the experience and expertise of our trade marketing teams to build successful businesses and ensure they play a vital role in preventing underage sales.

We are proud of our people

Ambitious, courageous and resilient

Are you interested in joining us? If so, you’d be part of something special – working for a leading global company with a clear vision to build A Better Tomorrow™ .

You’d be joining a company with a clear purpose underpinned by corporate values that shape exciting and winning company.

The quality of our people is key to our continuing success, so attracting and developing talented people is a top priority.

Our focus is on building and inspiring diverse teams. We invest in skills and creating a working culture where passionate and driven people can thrive and reap the rewards of a fulfilling career.

Few other companies are as diverse as BAT. We employ people of 135 different nationalities, from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, in management roles across the Group. Our target is to achieve at least a 50% spread of distinct nationalities in all our regional and functional leadership teams to better mirror our consumer base. In 2023, this was achieved in all key leadership teams.

We value this kind of diversity because it encourages innovation, creativity and different ways of thinking. It creates a fascinating place to work, with opportunities to collaborate with a wide range of people from various countries, cultures and with different perspectives.

We’re big on career progression for women and we’re proud to have strong female representation in our senior management teams. This progress has been driven by initiatives such as our Women in Leadership programme , while around half of our graduate intake each year is female.

We strongly believe in developing talented people from within the business and many of our appointments are promotions for ambitious people already here at BAT.

We stretch and support our people so that they can fulfil their potential. Our Global Graduate Programme, for example, includes exciting international work placements and is focused on developing our next generation of leaders.

We are also keen to attract the most talented people from outside BAT to complement and further strengthen our existing teams.

We know that many people want to join a business with a clear purpose that will allow them to make a difference and contribute to real change.

And as a company committed to leading change in our industry – and building A Better Tomorrow™ – this is precisely what we can offer.

Find out more about working at BAT by visiting our careers website .

You might also be interested in

‘The transformation is real, and we are delivering tangible change’

Flora Okereke, BAT’s Head of Regulatory Insights and Foresights, discusses the positive impact of BAT’s A Better Tomorrow™ ambition in the latest edition of Tobacco Reporter magazine.

Read more >
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