Having the freedom to innovate
Alice is a Technical Specialist in the exploration team within the combustibles department and is responsible for coming up with ideas for innovations in cigarettes for adult smokers.
“We transform ideas into consumer-facing concepts and prototypes, assessing their technical feasibility and screening them down into a realistic number of projects for the year. I have a lot of freedom on my projects. I can put forward as many ideas that I have, and BAT always welcomes them – they might be a bit bizarre, but they could also work very well.”
For Alice, there are a lot of factors that come into play when doing her job. In such a highly regulated industry, she has to ensure that any product innovations are in line with regulations in place. These innovations are not only for the UK markets either, she has to think about regulations in countries in South America, Africa and in Asia too.
“Soon, I’ll be visiting the pilot plant in Bayreuth in Germany to look at the processing techniques they have.”
Working in combustibles, Alice is often asked why she didn’t choose to join our new category products business.
“Recently, we’ve seen a lot of people in combustibles moving over to new category products. I’m happy in combustibles because I like the science in this area. I was in new categories on my placement year and I’ve seen the best of both worlds. With new category products, everyone knows it’s exciting – e-cigarettes and tobacco heating products are still relatively new technologies. What people don’t know is the combustible side is equally exciting.”
