We are BAT
We are a leading, multi-category consumer goods business. Our purpose is to build A Better Tomorrow™ by reducing the health impact of our business through offering a greater choice of enjoyable and less risky*† products for our consumers.
We hope 'We Are BAT' helps you to understand who we really are. How we operate; what it's like to work for our company, and our clear purpose.
We are a leading global company
Global presence and over 50,000 employees
Founded in 1902, BAT is a leading consumer goods business.
We sell five main categories of products: Vapour, Heated Tobacco, Modern Oral, Traditional Oral and combustible cigarettes. Our purpose is to build A Better Tomorrow™ by reducing the health impact of our business. We do this by offering smokers a greater choice of enjoyable and less risky*† products.
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 more than 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 purpose to build A Better Tomorrow™ by reducing the health impact of our business.
Put simply, we believe that smokers must have access to better choices.
This entails:
- Committing to providing adult consumers with a wide range of enjoyable and less risky*† products
- Continuing to be clear that combustible cigarettes pose serious health risks, and the only way to avoid these risks is not to start or to quit
- Encouraging those who otherwise continue to smoke, to switch completely to scientifically-substantiated, reduced-risk alternatives*†
- Tracking and sharing progress of our transformation
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.
* Based on the weight of evidence and assuming a complete switch from cigarette smoking. These products are not risk free and are addictive.
† Our Vapour product Vuse (including Alto, Solo, Ciro and Vibe), and certain products, including Velo, Grizzly, Kodiak, and Camel Snus, which are sold in the U.S., are subject to FDA regulation and no reduced-risk claims will be made as to these products without agency clearance.
We are building A Better Tomorrow™
Tobacco heating products feature among our portfolio of reduced-risk products
Today, we have a clear corporate purpose – to build A Better Tomorrow™ by reducing the health impact of our business through offering a greater choice of enjoyable and less risky products*† for our consumers.
Our business is transforming.
Our strategy is about anticipating and satisfying the ever-evolving consumer: providing pleasure, reducing risk, offering an increasing choice and stimulating the senses of adult consumers worldwide.
Alongside our combustible products, our broad portfolio of non-combustible products includes reduced-risk alternatives*† such as Vapour products, Tobacco Heating Products and Modern Oral nicotine pouches, as well as Traditional Oral products such as snus and moist snuff.
Our ambition is to continue expanding our portfolio with a wider range of enjoyable and less risky products.
Our approach will deliver A Better Tomorrow™ for our consumers who will have a range of enjoyable and less risky*† choices for every mood and moment; for society through reducing the overall health and environmental impacts of our business; for our employees by creating a dynamic and purposeful place to work; and for our shareholders by delivering sustainable superior returns.
* Based on the weight of evidence and assuming a complete switch from cigarette smoking. These products are not risk free and are addictive.
† Our products as sold in the US, including Vuse, Velo, Grizzly, Kodiak, and Camel Snus, are subject to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation and no reduced-risk claims will be made as to these products without FDA clearance
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 several years. 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 reduced-risk*† 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 2022, BAT’s New Category products are now available in some 60 markets.
To achieve a step-change in New Categories, we are building new capabilities around the world focused on science, innovation, and digital information.
Consumer preferences and technology are evolving rapidly, and we are staying ahead of the curve with 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.
The progress we have already made gives us confidence in achieving our stated ambition for the future – 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 £5 billion in 2025.
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, reduced-risk alternatives*†.
* Based on the weight of evidence and assuming a complete switch from cigarette smoking. These products are not risk free and are addictive.
† Our products as sold in the US, including Vuse, Velo, Grizzly, Kodiak, and Camel Snus, are subject to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation and no reduced-risk claims will be made as to these products without FDA clearance
We are responsible
Committed to operating to the highest standards of corporate conduct and transparency
Sustainability is at the heart of our transformation. We are moving from a business where sustainability has always been important, to one where it is front and centre in all that we do.
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.
This entails:
- Increasing our consumers of non-combustible products to 50 million by 2030
- Achieving carbon neutrality for our own business activities by 2030¹
- Achieving Net Zero across our value chain by 2050
- Making all packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable 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 ESG and sustainability goals for more information.
- Based on Scope 1 and 2 carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions.
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 80,000 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 ethos that underpins a future-fit culture that will allow us to deliver our vision. Our ethos is about being bold, fast, empowered, responsible and diverse.
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 138 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 2022, this was achieved in all key Regional/Functional 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 .
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‘The transformation is real, and we are delivering tangible change’
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