Finland's first nicotine pouch factory has shut down after two years — and production moved to Sweden
Habit Factory's Strengbergs plant in Jakobstad — Finland's first pouch factory — is closed, with production moving to a former Swedish Match factory on Gotland. Finland's tightened tobacco law gets the blame.
Finland's first-ever nicotine pouch factory has closed after barely two years. Habit Factory, the Swedish company that resurrected the historic Strengbergs name in the coastal town of Jakobstad, has shut the plant and moved all white-snus production back to Sweden — and the company's owner has just bought Swedish Match's old snus factory on Gotland to do it.
What happened
By Monday the Jakobstad factory was packed up and dark, according to reporting by Österbottens Tidning confirmed by Svenska Yle Österbotten. Habit Factory started production there in May 2024, making white snus under the Strengbergs brand — a name with deep local roots — and became the first nicotine pouch manufacturer in Finland. The plan was ambitious: eight production lines and 150 new jobs.
It never got close. At the end of last year the factory employed 14 people and packed about 15,000 cans of white snus a day. Production lead Michael Pettersson, a Jakobstad native with more than 20 years in the tobacco business, no longer works at the company.
Why it matters
The finger points at Finland's tightened tobacco law, which took effect in May 2025: fewer allowed flavours, a higher excise tax, and a coming requirement that all pouches ship in plain brown cans — a package style designed to make the products less appealing. That is the same law that capped pouch nicotine at 16.6 mg/g and banned most flavours. For a small factory whose whole pitch was domestic production, the squeeze was fatal.
There is a bigger signal here for the pouch industry: tight national rules don't just shrink sales, they push manufacturing out entirely. Finland didn't ban pouches — it regulated them hard enough that the country's first domestic producer gave up and left. Finland now imports everything it permits. Meanwhile, company head Ara Abrahamian has bought Swedish Match's former snus factory at Roma on Gotland, so the Strengbergs production simply moves into Sweden's far more pouch-friendly regulatory environment. Yle was unable to reach Abrahamian for comment.
For Finnish pouch users, the practical effect is indirect: the product still exists, but every can now travels from abroad, and the domestic jobs and tax base attached to it are gone.
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