Three weeks after installing a new cigarette machine, Savanna Tobacco has introduced a product that seeks to eliminate “naked” cigarette sales in the country and on the continent.
The new five-pack is a foil-wrapped unit designed to cater for consumers who have been subjected to accessing cigarettes in an unpacked format as a result of low purchasing power.
Savanna Tobacco executive chairman Adam Molai said the “insult” of getting credit notes or items irrelevant to the customer were essentially over for cigarette consumers.
He said the new innovations were a culmination of an extensive research focusing on the buying patterns of cigarette consumers that indicated over 65% of African consumers purchased single “sticks” owing to limited disposable incomes.
“Stick sales are unhygienic,” Molai said. “Our innovation agenda was to respond to our research findings through affording our African consumer with a packaged alternative that suits their spending capabilities while restoring dignity and hygiene to the consumer.
“With what we now have in the market, our consumers, regardless of their class, can proudly hold their own packs with dignity.
“We are taking it upon ourselves to bring dignity to our African consumers’ who for years have been relegated to having to purchase unpackaged cigarettes at street corners owing to low incomes.”
Molai said unpacked cigarettes had exposed consumers to diseases such as typhoid and cholera.
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“African consumers must be treated with the same respect as their Western counterparts for whom the 20-packs were designed to align to their consumption patterns,” he said.
“On a national scale, corporate Africa should package their offerings to suit African dynamics rather than to continue to pursue Eurocentric solutions to African dynamics.”
He said as an African player, Savanna intended to provide packs aligned to African consumption patterns by coming up with African solutions to African problems without compromising quality.
