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Investigatese-cigarettesVAPES HAVE RAPIDLY become part of our lives, with stands promoting the products in almost every corner shop.
But where do they come from?
The Journal Investigates took to the streets of Dublin recently and found vapes were available in newsagents, phone repair shops, vending machines… they were often displayed at our eye line, easy to pick up from cabinets at the checkout.
We bought some of the more common disposable vapes that line shop shelves.
The vast majority that we picked up had one resounding origin in common — China. Shenzhen in China to be exact. This city is in the southeastern region and is the third largest city in the country.
A number of the popular brands we bought — Lost Mary, Elfbar and SKE — have Shenzhen listed as their manufacturing location on their packaging.
The company behind Aspire and Geekvape Aegis products are also based there.
Shenzhen is a hub for the vape industry. So much so, Chinese authorities have smoothed the way in recent years for overseas shipping, with certain Chinese vaping companies at the city’s airport requiring fewer export inspections, according to a Reuters report.
This includes Heaven Gifts, the company behind Elf Bar and Lost Mary.
That is despite China cracking down on e-cigarettes at home, with a ban of flavoured products in force since 2022.
A report by the Associated Press (AP) in December 2023 highlighted how some Chinese companies were flooding the United States with flavoured vapes that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The US agency has not allowed flavoured products to taste like fruit, dessert or sweets in recent years.
The AP report stated that products worth hundreds of millions of dollars were imported to the US from China, with manufacturers repeatedly dodging customs and avoiding taxes and import fees.
The Irish government is also set to ban disposable vapes and restrict flavours in the coming term. Colours and imagery on packaging and devices will also be restricted under the new legislation.
Only tobacco-flavoured vapes will be initially allowed under the Nicotine Inhaling Products Bill, which received cabinet approval in September.
Speaking at the time, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said that the State will be banning around 16,000 flavours of disposable vapes, adding that flavourings such as bubble gum is a “very deliberate and cynical” targeting of children.
A number of other e-cigarette products are also made in China but by non-Chinese companies.
IVG is a brand by Acme Vape Labs, based in the UK. At least some of the IVG range is imported from China, including an IVG 2400 product our team purchased last month.
We also bought a number of Vuse vapes which were imported from China by tobacco company PJ Carroll, which is part of the British American Tobacco group.
In Ireland, there are a number of companies sell their own vapes and e-liquids.
This includes one of Ireland’s largest vape distribution and manufacturing companies, Hale Vaping, which has a liquid manufacturing facility in Bagenalstown, Co Carlow.
Mark Curran, owner of the vape shop Vintage Vape Room and e-liquid manufacturer DRS Distro told The Journal Investigates that their liquids are manufactured in the UK.
This morning, we reported that tobacco companies operating in Ireland are increasingly looking to vaping to make up for falling cigarette sales. Read now >>
Reporter & Editor (The Journal Investigates): Maria Delaney • Additional Research: Conor O’Carroll • Editor (The Journal): Sinéad O’Carroll • Social Media: Sadbh Cox • Main Image Design: Lorcan O’Reilly
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Wouldn’t eircom be better off splitting their retail from their wholesale businesses ? Like what ESB did.
We’d all be better off
They can’t.
Eircom own the lines and are responsible for their maintenance. If you have your phone calls and line rental with say, Vodafone, then the line is still an Eircom line – it’s still Eircom engineers that repair it, because Vodafone pays them your line rental.
As far as I can work out from this – what they are saying is that if you had your line rental with another phone company and you had a fault, Eircom were prioritising repairing faults on Eircom customers lines, leaving you to the bottom of the pile. Which is illegal – because technically they are all Eircom lines and not serving them equally is leaving their competitors looking bad and is anti competitive.
They are split; Eircom wholesale and Eircom supply. Repped for them for a while and that was bit of info at training anyway!
Would make sense… We should have kept the network under Government ownership (managed by a private company) and sold off the retail part… Let other retails compete as well….
That way broadband roll out could have been easily rollout… It would be like our road structure… Done right it would have provided a top class network supported by all the payers… If a company wants to set up in a remote town they could have the government provide broadband as part of an infrastructure deal…
I think it’s nuts that they are fined over this. Of course their own customers should get priority!! It is ridiculous. And no – I don’t work for them. I am a very happy UPC customer.
But Enola – unless you are a UPC customer and they actually laid your line, you are an Eircom customer – regardless of who you pay your rental to. They merely pass that on to Eircom on your behalf.
But Shanti, it was done in the UK. BT, and Openreach. BT did own the lines, but now Openreach are responsible for maintenance for all operators. Irrespective of who it is. And they are a completely separate entity.
My mistake, it’s still a sub division of BT.
The mantra we were always given by management when we said that customers complained about line rental fees, was that the line rental didn’t cover the costs of maintaining the lines.. This may well have been utter lies – but it may also have been true.
If it is true, it would explain why other operators didn’t really invest in the actual provision of lines, NTL pretty much went bust out of laying lines in new developments around Dublin (Lucan if memory serves) – leading to them selling out to UPC, who had a lot of cable there from the TV services to build upon – they’re making a fair stab at it and fair play to them – but they have a secondary product (calls / TV) to make up losses with.
Of course it could have been Eircom playing the “poor us doing all the work while they take the glory of cheap calls” card, but you do have to wonder why the other guys wouldn’t invest the same way as UPC and Eircom have..
This article is correct in my opinion. Some time ago, as I am a computer technician, I was dealing with a problem of poor broadband speed and severe noise on phone calls (this was NOT due to missing or faulty filters). The contract the customer had was not with eircom. I contacted the technical help line of the customer’s provider who carried out extensive tests and determined that there was a line fault and to report it to eircom. This I did and was told that as there was no contract with eircom and that as the phone was working, they would take no action. I left at that stage and advised the customer that they should follow it up with their provider as I could do no more.
Another customer had very poor broadband (this time it WAS provided by eircom). The technical help person told the customer that the modem was old and faulty and offered a FREE replacement provided the customer signed up for another year. The customer received and installed the new modem with exactly the same poor performance. This customer moved to UPC and I got involved when the customer called me to set it up for him. I suggested that he should terminate his contract with eircom as UPC was working fine. He asked me to talk to eircom on his behalf to explain his problems to them. Eircom said that as he accepted the free modem he was tied by contract for the year even though the replacement modem failed to solve the problem. I asked eircom how the customer could exit this contract and they said if he paid them €400 they would cancel his contract!
John – contact Comreg.
That “free” modem would have cost max €40 to buy, to force a customer into a years contract (with a €400 get out fee) without resolving their issue cannot be legal..
Especially if the understanding was that the modem was to resolve the issue, it hasn’t, I would hazard a guess there’s a breach of contract there.. And possibly a recording of the call too (if the call was longer than 10mins racall definitely recorded it, whether it’s still on file is another matter).
Eircom have to revert to sneaky underhand tactics like this in order to try and scare customers into not leaving them. Why oh why anyone stays with them is beyond me. Their call charges are 4 times what we currently pay our supplier.
Who’s your supplier Magoo? Pee’d off with eircom myself.
Used to be with vodafone and phone used to have an intermittent fault which eircon were not able to fix or even find, but when I joined eircon they were able to fix it after one phone call!!
Where does the money go? And what is it used for?
Office Christmas Party.
U don’t begrudge comreg that do ya?
In the uk they split bt to bt retail and bt wholesale ,why cant we do that here ?
Because we are thick and our politicians are corrupt.
Eircom is a privately held company…
It is split into Eircom Retail and Eircom Wholesale. Technically, Eircom retail are customers of Eircom Wholesale, as are Vodafone, O2, imagine, ifa telecom and all the other landline providers that use the Eircom line. All customers using these providers are customers of Eircom Retail.
UPC have their own infrastructure which they built from the ground up starting after deregulation of the industry which occurred in 1998, because they built from the ground up so recently is why they can now offer higher Internet speeds, and because it is a fibre optic cable it can hold more call traffic allowing UPC to offer cheaper call rates and higher Internet usage allowances. where UPC are losing out is that they will only offer their service in the major towns and cities.
I wish we could vote for Irelands worst company – Eircom has to be up there. Everything and I mean everything about their approach to business is dinosaur mentality.
Debt, higher prices than competitors’, inconsistent BB speeds, offering stupid bundle packages, woeful marketing campains, poor infustructure, – the list is endless and I doubt it will be long until they are extinct.
Wake up Eircom, no one wants to pay €54+ P/M for out of date broadband speeds!
Better apply for the ceo position then. You’ve clearly got a plan
Shanti there has been free installation/connection of line for over a year now so that shouldn’t be an issue and as for caps and speed there all the same now…… Also you can ow get broadband without the need for line rental with eircom now…..
And yes I do work for the company ;)
I wasn’t aware when we signed up to install our line that you could get a competitor to install, because when I left Eircom you had to have a line installed already in order to be able to switch it.
Eircom wanted €99 for installation and the cheapest package was €40 per month with a 10gb cap.
That is scandalous. 10gb? Sure 3 give me more than double that on my mobile per month!
There’s no e-fibre where I live as yet..
Vodafone no connection fee, €35 per month and a fair usage policy of 300gb.
There was really no need to think about it, having worked for Eircom the last thing I wanted to do was feed the beast.. I saw how much of a mess they made of everything first hand so I certainly didn’t want to be a customer!
(Although to be fair, Vodafone are just as bloomin useless.. Why can’t we have an efficient, well run company in this country?)
I can vouch for Mark.
So can I, go on lad:-D
FAILCOM!
Can’t wait for my cut of that. Twice they’ve made appointments with me for efibre installation and twice it wasn’t done because they terminated the order. Someone will ring me back soon to sort it apparently. i guess they’ll look for my bank details then.
Just beware Sandra, you may be tied into a new contract by signing up to e-fibre.
I know but they’ve breached it numerous times at this stage!
This is true. Out of curiosity, what are you waiting for them to install?
Do you have a line yet?
You could sign up with another supplier – they are supposed to get your line set up for you, Vodafone waived the connection fee and will give you broadband as fast as your line is capable of.. Sky gave me a load of twaddle about not being able to do it, but they are obliged.
No need to sign up to Eircom, and with the prices and caps involved in e-fibre it’s not even worth it. Go with someone else – if there’s e-fibre in the area, they will give you fibre.
They have to switch over to vdsl and install new modem. Already have 170 quid credit with them for all the problems!
Cool, was just curious to know. Thanks.
Eircom me testicles!
What I’d like to known is what does that johnny come lately shower do with the 200 odd k?
Anyone, for the last choc ice on this one?
Lazy lazy “journalism”. Vodafone bought Perlico years ago. You don’t even mention the other significant OLOs
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