Carrefour in Europe Is Also Selling Disposable E-Cigarettes?

A piece of news caught attention today: Carrefour, the supermarket chain, has announced that it is putting disposable vaping devices on shelves in Spain, one of Europe’s key markets.

According to Spanish media outlet okdiario, Carrefour, the large retail supermarket chain, has already begun selling vaping products in some parts of Spain. It is the first supermarket chain to enter Spain’s vaping market.

(Is Spain’s retail channel becoming more mainstream?)

There are also many flavors. The flavors sold by Carrefour in its stores include mango, banana, apple, forest fruits, mint, watermelon, and more. The brand sold by Carrefour is Cool Vaps, priced at about 9.95 euros (roughly RMB 100).

These are all compliant disposable products, mainly 2 ml and 600 puffs, which also shows that major KA channels in the European market place great importance on compliance.

As one of Europe’s biggest markets after the UK, Germany, and Italy, Spain has always drawn strong attention and is also representative of the Southern European market. Its disposable segment also began to shift in 2022, with the number of e-cigarette users reaching 2.4 million, accounting for 5% of the total population.

At present, vaping products in Spain are mostly sold through tobacco shops. Many Chinese companies are also expanding into this channel and have begun cooperating with local Spanish tobacco distributors. Even Spain’s National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) has stated that tobacco shops hold a monopoly position in vaping sales.

Spain is currently still expanding the role of tobacco shops in the vaping market. This is because the agency, chaired by Cani Fernández, has put forward a series of considerations on the draft Tobacco Market Law and other related preliminary bills. The legislation seeks to extend the monopoly rights of tobacco retailers to vaping sales. This includes restricting vaping sales to specialized channels through a licensing system, and even proposing to ban and shut down all vaping shops in Spain, allowing sales only in tobacco shops.

In addition, the CNMC believes that the regulatory model used for cigarettes should not be applied to vaping products. In its view, vaping products should have their own independent regulatory framework to reflect their specific characteristics.

So far, sales channels for vaping products in Spain have not yet been regulated or controlled. In fact, a few months ago, some Spanish pharmacies also began selling disposables, both in physical stores and online. In addition, vending machines have joined this trend, and now supermarkets have started selling them as well.

From this perspective, sales channels for vaping products in Spain are also opening up at a faster pace.