Every e-liquid manufacturer in the UK is telling brand owners the same thing right now: we’re ready for VPD. It’s the right message. We’ve said it before too, in 2016, in 2021, in 2025, and each time the rulebook changed, we proved it.
Vaping Products Duty (VPD) is simply the latest chapter. It isn’t the first shift this industry has faced.
Rules and dates don’t make for gripping reading on their own. But they answer the question every brand owner should ask a manufacturer right now: when the rules changed before, what did you actually do?
Every vape manufacturer says they’re compliant. Fewer can say they’ve done it before.
Since 2014: built inside a changing rulebook, not before it
Xyfil has manufactured e-liquid, and later nicotine pouches, CBD and personal care products, from our Preston site since 2014. We didn’t arrive once this industry had settled down. There was no settled version to arrive into. UK vape manufacturing has been rewritten, in some way, in almost every year we’ve operated.
Most manufacturers pick a moment when the rules are stable and build around that snapshot. Every later change then lands as a disruption. We never had that luxury. So we built compliance as an ongoing discipline, a job that never really finishes.
2016: TPD arrives, and we move early
The Tobacco Products Directive reshaped the industry almost overnight. Nicotine strength capped at 20mg/ml. Tank sizes capped at 2ml, bottle sizes at 10ml. Every product needed MHRA notification, ingredient disclosure and standardised health warnings before it could reach a shelf.
Plenty of manufacturers scrambled. We were among the first manufacturers in the UK to bring our production and notification process in line with TPD. We moved well ahead of brands who left it late and found themselves locked out of shelves while their paperwork caught up. Brands working with us kept trading. Others didn’t.
Post-Brexit: same standard, new name
When the UK left the EU, TPD didn’t vanish. It carried over into UK law as the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations, with MHRA notification continuing much as before. We’d already built our systems around meeting a strict notification standard. Updating the reference in the rulebook barely touched day-to-day production.
2025: the disposable ban, and a fast pivot
From 1 June 2025, the sale and supply of single-use disposable vapes became illegal across the UK. Brands built entirely around disposables faced a genuine scramble. New device formats, new manufacturing lines, new packaging, all against a hard deadline. We’d already built flexible, reusable-format production capacity well before the ban landed. Brands who came to us in that window switched to a partner with the capacity ready and waiting.
2026: Vaping Products Duty
Which brings us to now. VPD applies from 1 October 2026. Every UK-sold e-liquid and nicotine product carries a flat duty rate from that date, with duty stamps, HMRC registration and a formal approval process behind it. It’s the most administratively demanding change this industry has faced.
We approached VPD the way we approached TPD and the disposable ban. Early, built as an operational project rather than a scramble against the calendar. We’ve spent the past year putting the compliance infrastructure in place that VPD requires. When 1 October arrives, it’s a date we’re positioned for.
Why this pattern should matter to you
A manufacturer’s history with regulatory change tells you something a sales page can’t: how they actually behave when the rules move. Some manufacturers wait and react. Others treat every new rule as an excuse to raise prices, or pass the risk downstream to the brands they supply.
Here’s what a decade of doing this repeatedly should tell a brand owner weighing up a manufacturing partner:
- The muscle is real, built over time. Meeting a regulatory deadline once could be luck, timing, or a good consultant. Meeting five of them, across a decade, under different governments and different rulebooks, is a pattern. A pattern is what you’re actually buying when you choose a manufacturer.
- Our compliance risk becomes your protection. Every rule change we’ve navigated happened on our side of the relationship. Your brand didn’t have to carry it.
- A long HMRC relationship counts for more when the rules tighten. Regulatory bodies deal with manufacturers they know. Ours has years of registrations, notifications and audits behind it, built long before VPD put pressure on the timeline.
- Continuity is the real product. Brands that switched to us during the TPD transition, and again during the disposable ban, kept trading through both. Tenure like ours is supposed to buy you exactly that.
What this means for your brand under VPD
Right now, you’re probably in one of three positions. Manufacturing in-house and racing the approval window. Unsure whether your current manufacturer is actually ready. Or importing, and wondering who handles the UK-side compliance for you.
Every one of those positions comes back to the same question. Has your manufacturer got a track record of getting through regulatory change cleanly? Or are you both about to find out together?
We’d rather you learned it from our history than from your own experience. Since 2014, we’ve done the same job through every version of this industry’s rulebook: TPD, Brexit, the disposable ban, VPD. It’s a pattern you can check, not a promise you have to take on faith.
If you want to talk through where your brand sits ahead of 1 October, book a readiness call by getting in touch. We can also walk you through our current approvals and compliance credentials directly.