The ’sugar tax’ on soft drinks is in force but although retailers are being charged more for sugary drinks, not all of them are passing on the tax to their customers. According to Britvic, if you sell 200 x 500ml bottles of full-rate levy products per week, the increased cost to your business per year is a whopping £1,248.

There is no levy on drinks with less than 5g of sugar per 100ml; there’s an 18ppl add-on for drinks with 5-7.9g of sugar per 100ml; and then there’s a 24ppl addition for drinks with more than 8g of sugar per 100ml. Pure fruit juice and drinks with 75% milk content are excluded from the levy.

What the levy adds to the prices of soft drinks is: 7p per 330ml can for the lower-level sugary drinks and 10p per can for the higher level. On 500ml PETs the tax is 11p and 14p respectively and on 2ltr PETs it’s 43p and 58p respectively.

Britvic’s advice to retailers is simple: pass on the levy to shoppers; review your range to ensure you offer a good variety of no- and low-sugar lines; but offer choice, as some consumers will still want the option of an added sugar product.