Tesco and Sainsbury’s are among supermarkets set to remove a popular Elf Bar flavour from UK stores amid concerns of illegal levels of nicotine.
The Watermelon flavoured Elf Bar 600 is currently unavailable to purchase from the Big 4 grocers, over reports that the product was found to have at least 50% more than the legal limit for nicotine e-liquid.
A spokesperson for Tesco told ITV News that the flavour has been “temporarily removed” from sale as a “precautionary measure”, as the vape manufacturer investigates the claims.
Subscribe to Grocery Gazette for free
Sign up here to get the latest grocery and food news each morning
Sainsbury’s said: “We are in close contact with our supplier and have temporarily removed the affected Elf Bar product whilst they investigate further.”
Morrisons added that it was taking the issue “very seriously”, and is “working closely with Elf Bar and Trading Standards to investigate this further.”
While the Watermelon Elf Bar is currently unavailable across these supermarkets, other flavours are still on sale.
This follows an investigation by the Daily Mail which sent five vapes from a Derbyshire Tesco to be tested.
A spokesman for Elf Bar told the newspaper: “We found out that some batches of the Elf Bar product have been overfilled in the UK.
“It appears that e-liquid tank sizes, which are standard in other markets [such as the US], have been inadvertently fitted to some of our UK products. We wholeheartedly apologise for the inconvenience this has caused.”
This comes as Waitrose banned the sale of single-use vaping products in its stores last month, as a result of their negative impact on the environment and the health of young people.
The upmarket retailer said the popularity of products such as e-cigarettes has soared over the past year, with vaping reaching record levels of around 4.3 million people, according to a report by smoking authority Action on Smoking and Health.
