The UK Vaping Products Duty is coming. Here's how to stay ahead.

October 2026 brings a new excise duty on vaping products - £2.20 per 10ml, with duty stamps required on retail packaging and HMRC registration mandatory for producers, importers and wholesalers.

The window to get your operations ready is shorter than it looks, and for businesses that manufacture, import, warehouse or sell vaping products, this isn't just a pricing adjustment. It's a fundamental change to how your operations need to work.

What's changing, and when

The Vaping Products Duty was confirmed in the 2024 Autumn Budget and forms part of HMRC's broader effort to regulate the vaping industry in line with tobacco excise frameworks. From October 2026:

• A flat rate of £2.20 per 10ml of vape liquid will be levied on all nicotine-containing and non-nicotine vape products
• A duty stamps scheme will require physical stamps on retail packaging to prove duty has been paid
• Businesses involved in production, import or wholesale distribution will need to register with HMRC and operate within a licensed framework

The rate is intentionally set below tobacco duty to preserve the relative cost incentive for smokers switching to vaping, but it will still add meaningful cost pressure across every part of the supply chain.

The operational impact is broader than it looks

At first glance, VPD looks like a finance and pricing problem. In practice, it touches almost every part of your business.

Stock and batch management becomes more complex. You'll need to track which products carry duty stamps, manage pre- and post-duty inventory separately during the transition period, and ensure your batch records are audit-ready for HMRC.

Pricing and margins need to move faster. With duty rippling through your cost base, you can't rely on static price lists. Margins across your product range - by SKU, channel and customer type - will need recalculating the moment your costs change.

Reporting obligations increase. HMRC will expect detailed records of duty-liable stock movements, returns and disposals. Businesses that can't produce clean audit trails will face significant compliance exposure.

Multi-channel complexity compounds everything. If you're selling B2B, D2C and through marketplaces simultaneously, each channel carries different pricing, compliance and documentation requirements. Managing these manually creates risk.

How Orderwise helps you stay in control

Orderwise is built for businesses operating in regulated, high-complexity product environments. The same capabilities that help food and drink manufacturers manage allergen and batch compliance, or industrial distributors manage serialised stock, apply directly to the challenges VPD creates.

Duty and compliance tracking built into stock control. Orderwise lets you manage batch and lot-level records alongside your standard stock processes - so you're not running a separate compliance system alongside your operational one. Duty status, stamp tracking and audit records sit within the same platform as your purchasing, warehousing and fulfilment.

Real-time pricing and margin management. When your cost base changes, Orderwise gives you the tools to update pricing across your product range and immediately see the downstream impact on margins - by product, channel, customer group or contract. You're not chasing spreadsheets when a duty rate moves.

Full audit visibility across the supply chain. From goods receipt through to customer delivery, every stock movement is recorded. If HMRC asks questions, you have answers - clean, traceable and exportable.

One platform for every channel. Whether you're fulfilling wholesale orders, running your own DTC operation or managing marketplace listings, Orderwise unifies these into a single operational view. That means consistent pricing, consistent compliance, and no gaps between channels.

Reporting and alerts built for regulatory deadlines. Orderwise's reporting tools give you the visibility to stay ahead of obligations - not just to satisfy them after the fact.

The businesses most at risk are those running on disconnected systems

The vape sector has grown quickly, and many businesses are still running on a patchwork of tools - a separate stock system, a standalone finance platform, manual spreadsheets for compliance. That setup might have worked when regulation was light. It won't work when you're managing excise duty, physical stamps and HMRC audit obligations simultaneously.

Businesses that consolidate onto a single, integrated ERP platform before October 2026 will be in a far stronger position, both to meet their compliance obligations on day one and to absorb the ongoing operational complexity that comes with an excise regime.

Getting ahead starts now

The October 2026 deadline may feel distant, but registration, system changes and staff training take time. The businesses that get ahead of this will be the ones that act before the pressure is on.

If you want to understand how Orderwise can help your business prepare for VPD, and build an operation that handles regulatory complexity without slowing you down - talk to our team today.