Philip Morris International has closed almost all of its recently opened ‘heated tobacco’ stores in Britain.
The tobacco giant had opened 16 IQOS stores, mostly in London, Manchester and Bristol. It said in June 2019 that it planned to open hundreds of outlets across the UK.
The IQOS brand – pitched as neither a vape nor a cigarette – was part of Philip Morris’s plans to stop selling cigarettes in the UK by 2030 and to become predominantly “smoke-free” by 2025.
A source who worked on the IQOS store plans said PMI had opened about 16 stores but at “the end of last year the company decided to quietly close them — having spent millions on a failed retail strategy”.
