How focusing on workers in our value chain adds business value
By embedding robust human rights due diligence across our value chain and aligning with international guidelines,i we ensure compliance with current regulations and are prepared for what comes next.
Proactive risk management is another driver of business value. Comprehensive due diligence provides early visibility into potential labor-related risks and systemic issues, enabling us to identify challenges early and take informed, timely action to avoid their escalation. This approach reduces the likelihood of supply chain disruptions and mitigates reputational harm, both of which are critical for maintaining business continuity and stakeholder trust.
Our commitments to ethical practices combined with our targeted actions allow us to build stronger ties with important groups such as regulators, suppliers, and partners. This ensures we can operate in diverse markets.
In the current context of climate change, global uncertainty, and evolving stakeholder expectations, having a resilient supply chain matters more than ever. By addressing material impacts on workers in our value chain, we can create measurable, positive results that protect our reputation and keep leading our industry forward.
Why is ‘Workers in our value chain’ a strategic priority?
Strategic approach
Our management approach centers on respect for human rights and environmental boundaries, robust governance, and tailored intervention across our value chain. As we continue to expand beyond agriculture into categories such as electronics and alternative nicotine products, we also continue to strengthen oversight and responsible sourcing throughout our value chain.
To achieve this, we proactively engage suppliers and assess risks by mapping our supply chain to understand roles, business relevance, and potential sustainability impacts. This ensures suppliers align with our requirements, including ethical labor practices, environmental stewardship, and business integrity, as formalized in our Responsible Sourcing Principles (RSP).
Respect for human rights is fundamental to what we do. We are guided by international standards like the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, applying robust policies and regular reviews, including saliency mapping and impact evaluations.
We recognize social and environmental risks are linked. By factoring social impacts into environmental risk reviews, we create holistic solutions and support workers, communities, and ecosystems.
We regularly review our human rights policies and due diligence processes to ensure alignment with regulations and identify areas of improvements. Transparency is key—we share progress, address challenges, seek external verification, and work with stakeholders to provide remedies if issues arise.
A transformed supply chain: Tobacco, nicotine, and electronics
Our transition towards a smoke-free business has already significantly reshaped our products and operations. Once focused on tobacco farming, we now include electronics manufacturing, nicotine sourcing, and a wider supplier network supporting smoke-free products and wellness initiatives.
This broader scope brings new challenges and opportunities. Electronics add varied manufacturing environments, labor considerations, and regulatory challenges. The 2022 acquisition of Swedish Match added nicotine supply chains across regions, each with unique risks and varying maturity levels.
Each part of our supply chain faces specific hurdles—from preventing child labor in tobacco-growing areas to tackling forced labor risks in electronics and building due diligence in new nicotine sourcing. While our tobacco supply chain remains the most advanced in due diligence and monitoring, we’re reinforcing efforts on livelihoods, labor rights, and sustainable farming as we grow into new categories and regions.
This evolution highlights our evolving expertise, operations, and sustainability across industries. Transparent progress reports, clear challenges, and tailored strategies are key to helping stakeholders see the depth of our transformation and the tailored strategies to address distinct risks and opportunities.
Our policies
These publicly available documents are complemented by additional internal policies, including PMI’s Ecodesign Guidelines and guidance on the implementation of local consumable take-back programs.
2030+ aspirations
Human rights due diligence
90 percent of our priority suppliers in direct materials, electronics, tobacco, nicotine, indirect materials & services, and technical procurement to meet PMI’s newly introduced Sustainability Due Diligence standard by 2030.*
Human rights promotion and protection
- Over 90 percent of priority tobacco leaf suppliers with identified child labor risks to have implemented targeted prevention and remediation measures by 2030.*
- Achieve a child labor prevalence below 0.1 percent across our tobacco supply chain, including the agricultural segment of our nicotine supply chain, by 2030.*
- Sustain a living income for at least 95 percent of contracted tobacco farmers supplying tobacco to PMI each year throughout 2030.*
- Enable over 80 percent of the most economically vulnerable contracted farmers supplying tobacco to PMI to benefit from interventions that drive a measurable increase in income by 2030.
- Maintain over 95 percent access to basic drinking water for contracted tobacco farmers throughout 2030, while expanding initiatives in new priority markets to address water access gaps.*
We will begin reporting performance toward newly established targets (marked with an asterisk) as of next year’s Value Report and will provide methodological details in our Non-financial KPI hub.
This online content about our Value Report should be read in conjunction with PMI’s Value Report 2025. This report includes metrics that are subject to uncertainties due to inherent limitations in the nature and methods for data collection and measurement. The precision of different collection and measurement techniques may also vary. This report includes data or information obtained from external sources or third parties. Unless otherwise indicated, the data contained herein cover our operations worldwide for the full calendar year 2025 or reflect the status as of December 31, 2025. Where not specified, data comes from PMI financials, nonfinancials, or estimates.
Unless explicitly stated, the data, information, and aspirations in this report do not incorporate PMI’s Wellness unit, Aspeya. Regarding the Swedish Match acquisition, completed late 2022, unless otherwise indicated, this report includes information pertaining to its sustainability performance. Please also refer to "About this report" on page 3 of the PMI’s Value Report 2025 for more information. Aspirational targets and goals do not constitute financial projections, and achievement of future results is subject to risks, uncertainties and inaccurate assumptions, as outlined in our forward-looking and cautionary statements on page 142. In PMI’s Value Report 2025 and in related communications, the terms “materiality,” “material,” and similar terms are defined in the referenced sustainability standards and are not meant to correspond to the concept of materiality under the U.S. securities laws and/or disclosures required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
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