The island’s reserves of locally made cigarettes are running low as the manufacturer and retailer of them prepares to shutter the business at the end of next month.

Michael Heslop, the proprietor of the Smoke Shop, said that a steep duty slapped on loose-leaf tobacco in 2019 had left him without an alternative.

Although the owner of the Hamilton business was able to get a one-off break from Curtis Dickinson, then the finance minister, he said that the six-month window of lower rates was not a lifeline for the ten-year-old shop in Washington Mall.

“I wouldn’t even call it a break,” he said. “No business could have survived paying a rate that high.”

Mr Heslop referred to the Customs Tariff Amendment (No 2) Act, which imposed a rate of $500 per kilogram on his product.

He said that the duty is up roughly 1,000 per cent over the past decade with the recent increase and at least one earlier increase in the tariff rate.

“I explained it to Mr Dickinson, and he saw the issue. He said he would lower it long enough to give us time — the Smoke Shop and Government — to come up with a fair tax for us to stay in business and Government to have a good tax rate.

“He was going to look at other countries like the Bahamas that manufacture cigarettes to see how they did it and how their rates work.”

Mr Heslop added: “Then he quit.”

According to the Smoke Shop proprietor, Mr Dickinson’s resignation as finance minister in February 2022 sent discussions “back to square one”.

He added: “We have to close our doors. We sold off our wholesale cigarettes, which are now gone. All we have is our cigarettes in the mall. That’s the last of our stock. We have other stock in our store, but we can’t stay in business.”

The Smoke Shop has given notice to its landlord, and Mr Heslop said staff were being paid redundancy.

Previously The Royal Gazette reported that there were eight employees, but Mr Heslop said the figure was closer to ten with part-timers factored in.

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said.

According to the store owner, his last correspondence with the Government was to supply financials of the business.

Asked if he felt a new deal could be struck, Mr Heslop said: “It was moving a lot faster with Curtis Dickinson, dealing with him directly. Now we’re going through three different people and no longer talking to the minister.”

David Burt, the Premier, assumed the finance portfolio since Mr Dickinson’s departure from Cabinet.

“We are still corresponding with the Government,” Mr Heslop said. “They ask questions, we answer them.

“We will just keep going until they say, ‘No, we’re not going to lower the tax’ — or whatever it is.”

If the existing duty rate holds, customers who sought out the Smoke Shop brand for its lower cost compared with commercial cigarettes will soon have to look elsewhere.

Speaking on Thursday, Mr Heslop said: “I think we’ll be out of them in a week.”

The Smoke Shop imported about 30,000kg of loose-leaf tobacco in two containers at the special tariff rate for a savings in duties paid of almost $12 million, according to Ministry of Finance records.