When buying alcohol, there are a few different ways you can do so depending on the volumes you wish to purchase and your own excise duty status.

Duty Paid

If you are buying in small quantities or if you do not have your own duty deferment account with HMRC, then you will have to buy the alcohol from us ‘duty paid’, which effectively means that the alcohol is already in ‘free circulation’.

 

Duty Unpaid

If you have your own duty deferment account with HMRC, then you can buy the alcohol at our ‘duty unpaid’ or ‘In Bond’ prices as the duty element will be charged directly to you. Please note that buying ‘In Bond’ is subject to certain minimum order quantities.

 

Bond-to-Bond

If you are registered with HMRC as a ‘Compounding Warehouse’, then you can have the alcohol delivered directly to your registered warehouse ‘under bond’, which means that you never pay the excise duty. Again, ‘bond-to-bond’ orders are subject to certain minimum order quantities.

 

Duty Relief on Alcohol

If you are a food manufacturer and you have no retail operation located in the same place as your manufacturing site, you will probably be eligible for duty relief, which can considerably reduce the cost of using alcohol as a food ingredient.

To qualify for duty relief, you will also have to satisfy the following requirements:

Chocolate:
should contain less than 8.5 litres of pure alcohol per 100kgs of chocolate

Other foods:
should contain less than 5 litres of pure alcohol per 100kgs of final product

 

If you believe you may be eligible for duty relief, please contact HMRC on 0845 010 9000 or visit their website at www.hmrc.gov.uk