NEWS
Know what you
vape with Liquid
Solutions
By Jillian Godsil
“The Tobacco Products Directive (TPD)
is around the corner. Much like a
troublesome uncle, its impending arrival
has been viewed with some trepidation
and general worry.”
At the core is the regulation and
classification of all products which will
surely put the cat amongst the proverbial
pigeons.
It is not as though the contents were
unknown. First published in 2014 the
details of the Directive have been slowly
fed into the public and will finally come
into law this month. The two year gap
was an allowance for manufacturers to
put their respective houses in order, and
it is a foolish company that has not used
this lead-time to fi nalise the legalities.
This makes sense, although it seems
to go against the grain of vaping and
dripping communities. The grassroots led
movement has favoured beards, plumes
and general creativity – the worry is that
intense regulation will stifle that creativity.
Liquid Solutions based in Waterford,
is a business bursting with creativity,
with director and chief vaper Killian
McGrath overseeing the company’s
developments. A former smoker,
Killian had tried an early commercial
e-cigarette. He was initially impressed
with the product but suspicious about
the contents through a mixture of
amateur labelling and lack of enforceable
legalisation.
However, he believed in the future of
vaping, and decided to make his own
product. He started in his own kitchen
and by sheer dint of experimentation,
began to develop an early range of vape
products. He knew that to succeed,
he would have to move away from the
cottage industry approach and found
factory premises instead. He had a
38 ISSUE 05 VAPOUROUND MAGAZINE
vision that his quality
product could dominate
the market.
From the very beginning,
testing formed a rigid
part of Liquid Solution’s
philosophy, while ‘Know
what you Vape’ has
become its mantra. This
was quickly established
across all areas of
production in the factory. An experienced
operations manager, George Piper was
hired to take care of the day to day
challenges facing a nascent industry with
little or no regulation in place.
George very quickly began to enforce
traditional manufacturing processes on
the factory. He looked to best practice,
ISO advices and Good Manufacturing
Processes to guide him in place of nonexistent external vaping regulations.
As part of his commitment to quality
products, George engaged an analytical
chemist and began testing the product at
every stage of production to ensure that
the quality was intact.
At the same time, George also began
to randomly test other juices available
for sale and his and Killian’s suspicions
were confirmed when some of the
arbitrary tests returned some shocking
results.
In some of the worse examples
benzopyrene and formaldehyde were
present in substantial amounts. In
others, the levels of nicotine were
inaccurately represented, in some cases
well below but also in others, significantly
higher than stated.
The new TPD legislation is due to come
into force on May 20, 2016, but Liquid
Solutions is well ahead of the game.
George was not going to leave anything
to chance.
Killian discovered early on that he
possessed a real nose for taste and
smell. In a parallel universe he might
have worked in a perfume factory or a
distillery. He possessed a natural talent
in being able to discern smells and
tastes and even more importantly, to
recreate them in another medium. From
this starting point he began the task of
deconstructing the tastes and smells of
regular tobacco. He roasted the tobacco
gently, producing the important notes for
experimentation, like a master perfumer
with a rose petal.
From there he sampled different tobacco
extracts before mixing these pure
concentrates – the flavour – with the four
main ingredients that form the basis of
reputable juice content; notably organic
vegetable glycerine, monopropylene
glycol, flavour concentrates, and
nicotine. He now had a purity and a