Knowledge base · 24 September 2026 · Updated 19 October 2026 · Stefan Bensmo

Is There a ZYN Shortage in 2026? Current Status and Lessons

No — the widespread US ZYN shortage is over. Supply was described as normalized around July 2025. Individual stores can still sell out, but the national capacity constraint that began in 2024 is no longer the current market condition.

When the market leader ran out

Per Truth Initiative and trade media, the ZYN shortage began in April 2024, peaked that summer, and took roughly 15 months to fully resolve — supply was described as normalized only around July 2025. The cause was simply that demand grew faster than production capacity (a widely circulated claim about a factory fire in Sweden was false; US ZYN is manufactured in Kentucky).

Philip Morris's response was massive investment in production capacity: $232 million for an expansion of the Owensboro, Kentucky plant (announced August 2024) targeting roughly 900 million cans of annual capacity, plus an entirely new factory in Aurora, Colorado for $600 million with around 500 new jobs through 2026. In total, Philip Morris International has invested over $800 million to build out the bottleneck.

The recovery shows what availability is worth

Two things happened at once during the shortage and the recovery that followed, according to the companies' own quarterly reports and Nielsen retail data:

• Smaller brands got a real opening. Turning Point Brands, a smaller player in "modern oral," reported its segment's net sales up 627.6% year over year in the third quarter of 2025 — a clear sign that consumers who couldn't find their first choice tried something else.
• Once ZYN's supply normalized, the brand took back a dominant position. In the third quarter of 2025, ZYN's global can shipments rose roughly 36% year over year, and US sales (Nielsen's estimate) grew 39%. By the first quarter of 2026, ZYN held around 61% of US retail dollar value and 56% of volume share in nicotine pouches.

Meanwhile, Altria's on! grew shipments 14.8% over the first nine months of 2025, to 133.6 million cans — but the brand's share of total oral tobacco stayed essentially flat (8.7%, down 0.1 points year over year). In other words, the category's overall growth absorbed much of the volume increase, rather than on! taking share directly from ZYN.

What it says about the role of availability

Our interpretation The pattern is clear: as soon as a leading brand becomes hard to find, consumers try something else, and smaller brands can win real, measurable trial in a short time — Turning Point Brands' figure is the clearest example. But loyalty to the established brand wasn't gone; it was only temporarily unreachable. As soon as ZYN could deliver at full volume again, it recaptured a dominant share, faster than most would have expected.

The takeaway isn't that brand doesn't matter. It's that availability is the precondition for brand strength to count at all: a strong brand that isn't on the shelf loses sales to whatever actually is there, just as a weaker brand that's always available wins trial it otherwise wouldn't get.

What it means if you manufacture or distribute

• Build inventory buffers before you need them. A competitor's shortage is a chance to win trial buyers — but only if your own production and distribution can handle the resulting demand spike. Turning Point Brands could; many smaller players can't.
• Treat distribution breadth as a strategic investment, not a logistics detail. Being in more channels and with more retailers is a direct hedge against a single bottleneck — a factory, a supplier, a customs delay — wiping out sales across the board.
• Expect windows to win market share to be short. ZYN's recovery shows that an established brand's loyalty can be restored quickly once supply is fixed. A temporary edge has to be converted into lasting distribution and customer relationships before the competitor is back at full strength.

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Frequently asked questions

Is there a ZYN shortage in 2026?

No. The widespread US shortage was resolved in 2025. A local out-of-stock notice can still happen, but it should not be confused with the earlier national shortage.

When did the ZYN shortage end?

Trade reporting described US supply as normalized around July 2025, roughly fifteen months after the shortage began.