The UKVIA (UK Vaping Industry Association) commissioned a report into the economic impact of vaping in the UK.
The study was carried out by CEBR (Centre for Economics and Business Research Ltd) using data from Bureau Van Dijk (BVD) who is a data provider that provides information on the finances of UK companies.
Method
Each company is classified in the BVD with a SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) code. The vaping sector falls into the code 47260 – retail sales of tobacco products in specialised stores. (Annoying how vaping is still classified together with tobacco – but hey that’s another debate for another day!)
All the companies in the code 47260 were investigated and then filtered for involvement in vaping products.
Also information from the Local Data Company was used to map the location of stores to UK regions.
Plus a vaping survey was carried out to understand the trends across the vaping industry over the last few years.
Results
Here I will summarise some of the results. This is a 61 page document so I will not go into much detail!!
According to the report both turnover and Gross Value Added (GVA) have increased from 2017 to 2021. However employment and compensation of employees (wages) has declined.
Turnover grew by £251m between 2017 and 2021 which is apparently a 26.4% growth rate! The turnover for 2021 was slightly lower than 2020 though?
The GVA value grew by £122m in the same period and equates to a 44% growth rate.
Tax contribution to the Exchequer was worth £310m in 2021!
Regional Impacts
Turnover wise the region with the highest turnover was the South East.
The region with the highest GVA generated was also the South East in 2020 at a whopping £72m !
Contrast that with the lowest GVA at £12m. The North East had the highest GVA growth between 2017-2020 at 156%!
Employee wise Scotland employed the most people in the vaping industry in 2020 at 1,341.
Vaping Numbers
According to the report the number of vapers in the UK has increased from 2.7m in 2017 to 3.7m in 2021. Approximately a 37% increase according to the ONS (Office of National Statistics) data.
As to the number of actual vaping shops – between 2017 and 2020 this has increased from 2,280 to around 3,650 – approximately a 61% increase.
Wider Benefits
Obviously as the vaping industry increases there are other benefits financially.
For instance smokers switching to vaping apparently saved healthcare around £320m in 2019. Plus productivity gains from smokers swapping to vaping is around £300m.
Conclusions
So according to the report the economic impact of vaping is huge in the UK!
·£1,325m in turnover
·£401m in GVA
·8,215 FTE (Full Time Equivalent employees) jobs
·£154m in employee wages
·£310m in tax contributions
The above is without the health and productivity benefits included!
So us vapers are helping the UK economy too!