Richmond

About Richmond

Richmond is a British brand of cigarettes owned and manufactured by Imperial Tobacco, whose United Kingdom operating company sits inside the Imperial Brands group.^[1] Imperial first used the name in Canada in 1968 and reintroduced it in the United Kingdom in 1999 as a value brand, competing at the lower end of the market with Mayfair, Sovereign and Park Road.^[1] On 2004 market figures it was the strongest of those value brands: Richmond Superkings was the fourth best-selling cigarette in Britain on 6.6 per cent and Richmond King Size fifth on 4.9 per cent.^[2] Imperial said in 2011 that more than one in ten cigarette purchases in the country came from the range.^[3] Since a 2021 repositioning it is sold as Richmond Original, Bright and Green Filter, with a Compact format added in 2023.^[4][5]

The Canadian Richmond of 1968 was a filtered king size and Imperial's only brand to use the Strickman filter, an early high-filtration tip thought to cut particulate matter in the smoke more effectively than standard cellulose acetate; those claims were later disproved and the brand was withdrawn by the early 1970s.^[1] The British brand that carries the name from 1999 was built on bright blue packaging, restyled in early 2006 from a serif wordmark to a sans-serif one on a more minimalist pack, with limited-edition Chill Edition packs in 2008 whose tactile finish was carried across the range in a 2011 update.^[1] In August 2011 Imperial added Richmond Superslims, which it presented as the first superslim cigarette in the United Kingdom value sector, in standard and menthol packs of 20 at a recommended £6.16.^[3] Brand colours left British packs on 20 May 2016, the day the Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015 came into force.^[6] In September 2021, after cutting the price, Imperial placed the whole portfolio in a value tier and renamed the Real Blue variants Richmond Original, selling packs of 20 at £9.25,^[4] and in August 2023 it added Richmond Compact, a rounded-corner pack whose sticks are 13 per cent slimmer, at a recommended £10.99.^[5] The brand has been sold outside the United Kingdom as well, in markets that have included Luxembourg, Belgium, Finland, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Canada, Aruba, Curaçao, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.^[1]