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I meet Ali outside his tiny wholesale business, Fly Vape – the store name combined with the image of a vape bookended by angel wings appears on the shopfront. In place of a halo is a cloud of vapour. The softly spoken 40-year-old says that working in the vape trade is “OK, better than nothing”. He opened Fly Vape just over two years ago, selling vaping products to small retailers such as convenience stores. Candy-coloured boxes bursting with fruity flavours line the shelves, although body sprays, soft drinks and a plentiful selection of bongs are available too. His customers come “from all around the UK”, he says, although he names only “Leeds, Bradford, Hull”. He shrugs at the fact that, compared with his neighbours, his sales are modest. He is not one of the “big men” here, he grins.

Ali’s store is in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, where two adjoining litter-strewn back streets near Manchester prison (formerly Strangeways) have emerged as a surprising industry hub in recent years. Ali’s is one of more than 50 outlets specialising in vapes and their accompanying products in an area that has been dubbed Britain’s “vape capital”. Most appear to be wholesalers; there are few passersby and some doors bear signs stating “trade only”, “not open to the public”.

The first is Harris Street, heralded by giant billboards for the vape brands Lost Mary and Vaplay. “Golden Juice” vape liquids, “Pod Royal” vape kits; “Better Flavours, Better Qualities” read the posters. Beyond its crammed row of wholesalers lies the second street, which shopkeepers refer to as “the square”: a U-shaped industrial park on Overbridge Road where more vape retailers compete cheek by jowl. “Vape Mart”, “Vape 247”, “Juice Empire”, “Shining Star” read the names in garish letters in a clutter of signage above the units and pinned to fences. A video billboard flickers “Welcome Vape”.

Historically a Victorian textile processing district, this area of Manchester has been a wholesale centre in a variety of trades over the years. Yet the concentration of so many vape outlets in one place raises eyebrows – not helped by past criminal activity. In recent years, Cheetham Hill earned the tag “counterfeit street”; Greater Manchester Police and Manchester city council began targeting the patch in 2022 under Operation Vulcan, closing 216 shops, seizing more than £500,000 in criminal cash and disrupting organised crime.

Among the goods seized were nearly 400,000 illicit vapes. There are minimum standards for e-cigarettes and refill containers, including tank capacity and nicotine strength. Single-use vapes were also banned in June in the UK, for environmental reasons and to help deter a rising market in nonsmokers and underage users. However, more vape outlets have since moved into the cleared units.

Chief Inspector Jon Shilvock of Manchester North neighbourhood policing team stresses the work that the force did has “helped to ensure legitimate businesses can operate in a much safer environment” today, but adds that monitoring continues. “If concerns are reported … we are actively dealing with these and continue to be robust in the area,” he says. “We are working hard to build intelligence and, alongside Trading Standards, will assist and conduct seizures to ensure businesses are operating safely. We listen to our community and where necessary will take appropriate action to ensure our local high streets are safe and for our residents.” He also highlights force-wide work by the National Crime Agency-coordinated Operation Machinize “to tackle money laundering and criminal use of cash-intensive high street businesses”.

Even so, Cheetham Hill has a reputation that is proving hard to shake – not helped by its incongruity. Only an American candy store breaks the monotony of vape stores. Many business owners and buyers decline to speak or give a name. Shop manager Gurnan Singh, 23, receives a phone call after giving us permission to photograph his shop, and quickly withdraws it. “My head office has seen us on my camera,” he says, pointing above his head.

John Dunne, the director general of the UK Vaping Industry Association, says there is no other vape wholesale hub this large in the UK. Cheetham Hill’s wholesale history provides some explanation, as does the fact that the north-west generally has claimed a prominent slice of the UK’s booming vaping industry, which reports valued at just under £3.2bn by the end of 2024, jumping by 5% from 2023. Last year, a study by Health Equity North found the number of vape shops on English high streets had increased by almost 1,200% over the past decade, with twice as many in the north as in the south of the country. Although the City of London topped local authorities with the most per 10,000 people, Blackburn, Preston, Blackpool and Bolton followed.

“Look at the big smoking hotspots of the UK – that’s pretty much where you’ll find the most vape shops,” says Dunne. The study also found three times as many vape shops in the most deprived areas of England as in the least. “The highest smoking areas are generally those that are the lowest economic areas as well,” says Dunne, and “vaping is considerably cheaper than smoking. The cost of warehousing, labour, shop rents … tends to be cheaper in those areas as well.”

Manchester, he says, has taken advantage of the vaping explosion. Last year, Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) found that 10% of British adults now vape – an estimated 5.5 million people. The industry’s evolution has, of course, also started to encompass nonsmokers and underage users too, causing widespread concern. A Lancet report found vaping among non-regular smokers reached 3.5% by 2024, up from 0.5% in 2021, while about 7% of 11- to 17-year-olds now say they vape.

Chinese products make up about 90% of the industry – although vape liquids consumed in the UK tend to be British-made, explains Hazel Cheeseman, Ash’s chief executive. Their low price point has been accompanied by “light touch” regulation, and so an illegitimate market has also grown, buoyed up by the surge in even cheaper disposable vapes before their ban. The Independent British Vape Trade Association says illicit trade now seems to be in decline, based on reports of product seizures after the ban. On the other hand, recycling campaign group Material Focus recently found that more than 6 million disposable vapes and pods are still being discarded every week in the UK.

Cheeseman says vape products command profit margins four times as high as tobacco products for small retailers, so “everybody’s making quite a lot of money in these supply chains”. Convenience stores, as well as piecemeal outlets from barbers to chicken shops, have joined specialist shops in selling vapes, she adds.

Nevertheless, Dunne questions the benefit of so many wholesalers grouped together. Even Ali concedes it makes business tricky. “Customers try to get the cheap prices,” he says; they go from unit to unit, haggling. His margins range from £1 to £5 a box. Other sellers speak of 50p mark-ups, or none at all.

I spot a young buyer clutching two carrier bags, which he tells me contain a two-week supply of vape products for his family’s convenience store in Tameside, Greater Manchester. “Twenty boxes of rechargeables, 10 boxes of liquids,” he says. “I come here because it’s cheap … £1 to £2 a box cheaper.” I pop inside the store he has just left, where the sellers are silently counting tenners but decline to be interviewed.

For many, trade appears brisk. One store manager describes retailers coming from “Glasgow, Ireland, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Doncaster, Wales …” and says a “normal month” would see 500 boxes collected. It’s a broad reference, but he points to refillable liquids, explaining there are five units in each box. That would be 2,500 snaking into British high streets a month from his small store alone. Hayati is his bestselling brand. He points to e-liquids. “From China. Most of them are from China,” he says, although Hayati is in fact a UK brand, but manufactured in China with headquarters in Hong Kong. Those he sells at £30 for a box of five.

In the square, the only female employee I meet explains that custom doubles on Sundays because retailers are generally free to travel to buy stock from farther afield that day. “Sometimes shops will come and get 30 or 40 boxes, all flavours,” she says.

Former takeaway worker Raj opened his shop here four years ago, even though he has never vaped – “I don’t like it,” he says. Hayati sells well for him too. He also points to bestseller Blue Razz Lemonade refill pods, then rows of cylindrical packets of oral nicotine pouches in 30 flavours ranging from “freezing peppermint” to “orange spark”. He is not worried about the level of competition here. Customers simply know where to come. “It’s easy to sell here,” he says.

Another shop owner in a pristine grey tracksuit agrees. “In a different area, we wouldn’t grow so fast,” he says. Inside his store, men sit at laptops taking online orders; others pack boxes. He says they sell to retailers in person and online, “50/50”, and is unhappy about the negativity the area has been attracting. “Everyone who works here does their job; they get up early.”

Dunne claims some retailers will not buy in the area due to its reputation. “There’s many companies that won’t deal with any of the wholesalers up there,” he says. However, Manchester city council stresses that a “significant amount of effort has gone into forcing out criminal elements” and it continues to “gather intelligence on businesses suspected of illegal activity”. It says the “vast majority” of businesses “trade legally” and “are run by members of the community who are keen to see their area prosper”.

Kate Pike, a regional coordinator at Trading Standards North West and the lead officer for tobacco and vaping at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, says there are fewer raids now because “we are not getting any intelligence to suggest there are the same issues”. She explains that, before the disposable vapes ban, they found “many” illegal products, but uncover fewer now as the low cost of compliant vapes provides “little incentive for retailers” to trade illicitly.

She suggests that the hub in Cheetham Hill could be down to suitable unit space opening up after Operation Vulcan. “There is nothing stopping vape shops opening next to other vape shops, so presumably they believe there is a sufficient market for all of them,” she says.

In Uncle’s Vape Co, the man behind the counter gives his name only as George Best (he fondly recalls the day Bobby Charlton visited his school), and speaks passionately about the business. He stresses the wholesale history of the area; how Jewish immigrants, then south Asian, and more recently Afghans, have traded here. He is 67 and has been here 14 years; his family, who started out in the rag trade in 1967, switched to vapes when there were just “eight or nine” vape shops here to “help people get off cigarettes”. His liquids are arranged proudly in a rainbow of graduated shades, from “blueberry” to “cola”; “cherry ice” to “grape ice”.

He also supplies shops across the UK. Retailer David Farrow, 67, has two vape shops in Scarborough and Pickering, North Yorkshire. He is here buying 20 boxes – 10 liquids a box – which will last about a week. He started his vape shops after losing his job at 50 and going through a divorce. He vapes himself, to quit smoking. “It was the only thing that ever worked.”

The UK’s thriving vape industry is braced for change. A vaping products duty of £2.20 per 10 millilitres of vaping liquid, regardless of how much nicotine is contained in the product, will be introduced in October, providing the government with revenue that is expected eventually to exceed £500m a year. Alongside this, the proposed tobacco and vapes bill “will regulate most aspects of the product”, explains Cheeseman. “Product design, promotion, content, it will create a retail licensing system, and it will clear a new registration scheme for products.” Controversially, it also proposes reducing vaping in public spaces.

She believes industry shrinkage may happen as a result; certainly an area such as Cheetham Hill may be affected. “It is very likely the number of outlets selling these products will decrease because they’re going to have to have a licence to sell. They’re going to have to comply with point of sale regulations,” she says.

The head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, Dr Chris Snowdon, stresses the risk of removing choice: increasing costs could push smokers back to cigarettes and drive “importing or buying on the black market”. That would be a catastrophe for what he sees as a “competitive” market.

Time will tell if this rainbow-coloured vape capital will continue to fly. While some sellers are clearly busy, monitoring laptops and packing boxes, others shrug that they are simply “surviving”, especially after the single-use ban. “I don’t think I will trade in vapes here much longer,” says one seller. “In a few months, there’s a new law coming …” So what next? “Well, there’s many businesses, you know.”