Time for KT&G sales push in US

South Korea’s leading tobacco producer KT&G said on Wednesday that it had relocated its US base from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Dallas, Texas, on the back of increasing sales in the country, according to a Daily Pulse story.

The company reported that cigarette shipments to the US reached a record high of 2.82 billion last year, 13 times higher than its shipments during its first year on the US market, 1999.

The Pulse story said that KT&G was the sixth biggest cigarette company operating on the US tobacco market, where more than 100 cigarette manufacturers were competing.

Much of the growth in cigarette exports to the US is down to the company’s Time brand, which made up 80 percent of its cigarette shipments to that country last year.

The company first introduced Time to the US market in 2010 when it opened its office in Oklahoma, and that year the brand accounted for 17 percent of its shipments to the US.

KT&G said it was seeking to add more sales networks in duty free shops at airports, and in big-box stores in large cities such as Chicago, Seattle and Las Vegas.

It planned also to enter the top hypermarket Costco.