Cigarettes
KT&G said that its outbound sales of cigarettes have broken the 500 billion unit mark. Considering that the world population is 7.22 billion, it is as if every person in the world has bought 69 packages of KT&G cigarettes.
According to data from KT&G on Sept. 16, its outbound sales volume reached 500.2 billion cigarettes as of Sept. 15. Counting in the cigarettes produced in KT&G’s overseas factories, the overall number increases to 532.1 billion sticks.
KT&G’s outbound sales performance has seen a drastic improvement since the former state-run enterprise was privatized in 2002. The annual outbound sales was only 2.6 billion cigarettes in 1999, and jumped to 28.5 billion in 2005.
The figure stood at 40.7 billion in 2012 after 10 years of privatization, increasing more than 15 times. Also, the sales revenue, US$14.76 million (17.34 billion won) in 1999, leaped more than 37-fold to US$560 million (657.72 billion won) in 2012, and the cumulative outbound revenue reached US $5.77 billion (6.78 trillion won).
The Korean tobacco-maker also expanded its overseas market from some Middle Eastern countries and Russia in the early stage of privatization to 50 countries in Southeast Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Accordingly, KT&G has positioned itself as the world’s fifth-largest tobacco manufacturer.