The Sutliff Closure: What It Means for American Pipe Tobacco
On February 28, 2025, the Sutliff Tobacco Company pressed its last batch of pipe tobacco at its Richmond, Virginia factory. A company that traced its origins to San Francisco in 1849, and that had operated as one of America’s most important pipe tobacco manufacturers for more than 175 years, closed its doors.
For most casual smokers, that line reads as ordinary industry news. For anyone who has spent serious time with American-made pipe tobacco, it marks the end of a chapter that won’t be reopened.
This post lays out what happened, what’s affected, and what the closure means for the pipes and blends sitting on our shelves. It is not, despite the obvious commercial interest we have in writing it, a sales pitch. The Sutliff story is bigger than any one product, and it deserves to be told plainly.
What happened
Sutliff had been owned by Mac Baren — the Danish pipe tobacco institution — since 2013. In late 2024, Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG), one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, acquired Mac Baren in a deal valued at roughly $77 million. STG already owned major cigar brands; the acquisition rounded out its pipe tobacco portfolio.
What came next was less expected. In early January 2025, STG announced that both the Mac Baren factory in Svendborg, Denmark, and the Sutliff facility in Richmond would close. All production would be consolidated at STG’s Assens factory, also in Denmark. Sutliff’s last day of production was set for February 28, 2025. Existing inventory would continue to ship until depleted.
Sutliff had moved its operations to Richmond in 1953, drawn by proximity to the major tobacco markets of Virginia and North Carolina. The facility had operated there for 72 years.
What’s affected
The list of brands and blends that depended on the Sutliff factory is longer than most pipe smokers realize. Sutliff was both a brand of its own and a contract manufacturer — many companies relied on Sutliff to produce blends sold under other names.
Directly owned blends being discontinued or facing reformulation include:
- Mixture 79, the historic flagship that drove Sutliff’s move to Richmond in the first place
- The Sutliff Private Stock series
- The Sutliff bulk tobacco range, including 515RC-1 Red Virginia and Z-92 Vanilla Custard — two of the company’s best sellers
- The John Cotton’s Double Pressed line — Double Pressed Virginia, Double Pressed Kentucky, Double Pressed Dark Fired, Double Pressed Creme — all pressed at Richmond and now winding down
- Various Mac Baren classics produced at Richmond for the North American market
Contract-manufactured blends from independent shops face an uncertain future as well. Country Squire, Iwan Ries, Watch City Cigar, Peretti, Uhle’s, and many other classic American tobacconists have store blends pressed by Sutliff. Each of those shops is now negotiating its own path forward. Most have not yet announced what continues and what doesn’t.
Why this matters beyond inventory
The American pipe tobacco industry is small. Most blends made in the United States in 2024 came from one of a few factories, with Sutliff being the largest among them. Going forward, the majority of American-marketed pipe tobacco will be produced overseas — at the Assens facility in Denmark, primarily — or made by a handful of smaller domestic producers operating at a fraction of Sutliff’s scale.
There is also the question of process. Sutliff’s Richmond facility had decades-old equipment and the institutional knowledge of how to use it. According to reporting from several industry sources, that equipment is being decommissioned rather than relocated. The specific feel of a Sutliff-pressed Virginia flake — the moisture, the cut, the way a crumble cake breaks in the hand — is the product of decades of refinement on machinery that no longer exists. Even if STG ultimately produces blends under the same names at Assens, the result will be a different tobacco. Sometimes meaningfully different.
What this means for cellaring
For pipe smokers who cellar tobacco — and Virginia smokers in particular — the closure changes the math on a few specific decisions.
Any current production tin of a Sutliff-made blend is, by definition, the last production. Existing inventory ships until depleted, then the line stops. A tin of John Cotton’s Double Pressed Virginia bought today is, almost certainly, from a batch made at Richmond on equipment that no longer exists. Future tins under the same name, if they appear, will come from a different factory and a different process.
This is not a manufactured scarcity story. It is a structural change to where these tobaccos come from. Whether that’s worth setting a few tins aside is a personal decision — but it is worth understanding the decision clearly.
What we know and don’t know
STG has confirmed that pipe tobacco production will continue at Assens. They have not said whether the specific double-press process, the bulk range, or the various contract-manufactured house blends will continue in any form.
It is reasonable to expect that the better-selling Mac Baren-branded blends will continue at Assens, though likely with adjustments to recipe and process. It is much less clear what happens to the Sutliff-branded blends, the John Cotton’s line, and the dozens of contract-pressed house blends that depended on Richmond’s equipment.
We will update this post as more information becomes available.
A note about Mount Tai
We do not usually use the blog to talk about our own products. But we would be hiding something obvious if we did not acknowledge it here: Mount Tai, our private-label Virginia, was developed a few years ago and pressed at the Richmond facility, using the same double-press process behind several of the blends discussed above. We have the inventory we have. When it is gone, it is gone, for the same reasons everything else discussed in this post is gone.
You can find Mount Tai here. The rest of this post stands on its own.
— Dreaming Pipes