RICHMOND, va. — Reynolds American Inc. is launching a cigarette that heats tobacco rather than burning it, hoping to capitalize on the growing appetite for alternatives to traditional smokes.
The nation’s second-biggest tobacco company said Monday that it will begin selling Revo — a cigarette that uses a carbon tip that heats tobacco after being lit — in Wisconsin in February 2015. Reynolds said the cigarette is a “repositioning” of its Eclipse product first launched in the mid-1990s with minimal success.
The surging e-cigarette or vapor industry has reinvigorated the interest for cigarette alternatives, including products like Revo and its predecessor, Eclipse, which smokers once considered foreign.
“Heat-not-burn technology was 20 years ahead of when consumers were ready for it. It needed the mass presence of vapor products to open up an experience base that smokers understood,” said J. Brice O’Brien, head of consumer marketing for the maker of Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes.
