We’ve known it’s been coming for a long time now, but it looks very much like the days of the disposable vape are numbered. April 2025 seems all set to be the deadline for removing them from the market and it’s critical that we use the time that remains to get our vaping ducks lined up so that they don’t all swim off a cliff, taking thousands of pounds of weekly sales and huge margins with them.
The argument for banning them is, frankly, difficult to counter. Once touted primarily as smoking cessation tools – and very effective tools at that – the stellar rise of disposable vapes took the once floundering category off in an entirely new direction. But the environmental impact they have and the well-chronicled rise in youth consumption, mostly people who had never smoked a cigarette in their lives, was only ever going to end one way.
The scale of the challenge the sector faces is monumental. For many stores, vaping has been the category that drove the profits and for some stores, the chances are that vaping is the only reason they’re still in business today.
The big question, however, is what will happen next April? There are several possible scenarios. We could see vapers shift seamlessly onto rechargeable devices. We could see some people quit vaping. It’s not out of the question that we see some people shift back onto cigarettes. The question is, what’s most likely?
My own personal feeling is that the migration from disposable to rechargeable won’t be quite as pain free as we might hope. From listening to the retailers who contributed to our cover story this month though, it seems that most are quietly optimistic that the mass migration will occur with a minimum of fuss. That would be nice.
Regardless of what happens, it will impact on retailers’ profits. The commercials around rechargeable vapes will be different, for a start. Plus, there’s the latest threat of a special tax being imposed on vapes, very much along the tobacco model. It’s still early days on that discussion but this seems like one of those ‘no smoke without fire’ subjects. It will surprise no-one if the cash-strapped government views a vaping levy as another of those morally justifiable supertaxes on products deemed to be unhealthy.
If that comes to pass, what does the category look like then? It will have lost a lot of its value to retailers, and it will undoubtedly have a negative impact on their end of year profits. And that’s before we even start talking about the likely impact on the illicit trade and the further damage it will do to legitimate retailers.
It’s a complex challenge and I would urge all retailers to start getting some plans together now for how they plan to navigate the April deadline and mitigate the impacts as much as they possibly can.
Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR
Disposable heroes up in smoke?
We’ve known it’s been coming for a long time now, but it looks very much like the days of the disposable vape are numbered. April 2025 seems all set to be the deadline for removing them from the market and it’s critical that we use the time that remains to get our vaping ducks lined up so that they don’t all swim off a cliff, taking thousands of pounds of weekly sales and huge margins with them.
The argument for banning them is, frankly, difficult to counter. Once touted primarily as smoking cessation tools – and very effective tools at that – the stellar rise of disposable vapes took the once floundering category off in an entirely new direction. But the environmental impact they have and the well-chronicled rise in youth consumption, mostly people who had never smoked a cigarette in their lives, was only ever going to end one way.
The scale of the challenge the sector faces is monumental. For many stores, vaping has been the category that drove the profits and for some stores, the chances are that vaping is the only reason they’re still in business today.
The big question, however, is what will happen next April? There are several possible scenarios. We could see vapers shift seamlessly onto rechargeable devices. We could see some people quit vaping. It’s not out of the question that we see some people shift back onto cigarettes. The question is, what’s most likely?
My own personal feeling is that the migration from disposable to rechargeable won’t be quite as pain free as we might hope. From listening to the retailers who contributed to our cover story this month though, it seems that most are quietly optimistic that the mass migration will occur with a minimum of fuss. That would be nice.
Regardless of what happens, it will impact on retailers’ profits. The commercials around rechargeable vapes will be different, for a start. Plus, there’s the latest threat of a special tax being imposed on vapes, very much along the tobacco model. It’s still early days on that discussion but this seems like one of those ‘no smoke without fire’ subjects. It will surprise no-one if the cash-strapped government views a vaping levy as another of those morally justifiable supertaxes on products deemed to be unhealthy.
If that comes to pass, what does the category look like then? It will have lost a lot of its value to retailers, and it will undoubtedly have a negative impact on their end of year profits. And that’s before we even start talking about the likely impact on the illicit trade and the further damage it will do to legitimate retailers.
It’s a complex challenge and I would urge all retailers to start getting some plans together now for how they plan to navigate the April deadline and mitigate the impacts as much as they possibly can.
Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR
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