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Soft Drinks Industry Levy

SDIL Commonly referred to as the Sugar Tax

It is a tax at source so only the manufacturer (or importer) gets involved in it (unlike VAT which is charged and paid to HMRC at each transaction stage along the supply chain).

Therefore the only thing we and our customers need to be mindful of are any changes in our cost prices as a result of it.
The tax charged is:

  1. 24p per litre of drink if it contains 8 grams of sugar per 100 millilitres
  2. 18p per litre of drink if it contains between 5 – 8 grams of sugar per 100 millilitres
  3. No tax if below 5 grams of sugar per 100 millilitres
  4. Fruit/vegetable juices or drinks made only from fruit/vegetable juices are not affected.

Small producers, classed as one which produces less than one million litres of liable drinks, are exempted.
For the purposes of the tax sugars are defined as sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose, galactose


More detailed info on how the levy works info can be found here
Exporters can reclaim the levy, further details here


Manufacturers have responded to it in a variety of ways.

Here are examples of what the major brands that we sell have done:

  1. Belvoir: Formulation unchanged, price increases implemented in our May Jun catalogue
  2. Bottle Green: Reformulated to be below threshold and relaunched in our Mar Apr catalogue
  3. Cawston: Reformulated to be below threshold.
  4. Dalstons: exempt as small supplier but under the top 8g limit anyway
  5. Fentimans: Formulation unchanged, price increases implemented in our May Jun catalogue
  6. Karma Cola: Formulation unchanged, price increases implemented in our May Jun catalogue
  7. Luscombe: Formulation unchanged but reduced bottle size to 270ml to keep price point the same
  8. Whole Earth: Formulation unchanged, price increases implemented in our May Jun catalogue