Is vape hardware manufacturing moving out of China?

These are journalism, not primary records, and the guide treats them that way: the figures above are what the trade press published, with a date attached, and they have not been confirmed against a company filing or a permit. The drivers quoted in the source are the need to reduce US tariff costs and the difficulty of obtaining a vape operating licence inside China. The same article reports Indonesian vape imports into the US exceeding 35% share by mid-2023, which would make Indonesia the second-largest exporter after China.

The licence point connects back to the mainland picture: production inside China runs through the tobacco-monopoly licence track, and what that licence covers and what its absence means is a guide of its own. A plant that cannot obtain one has a reason to assemble somewhere else.

Yes, from a regulator with no interest in the question. Japan Customs' intellectual-property seizure statistics for calendar year 2024, 33,019 cases, a record, and 1,297,113 items, up 22.8%, rank China first at 26,604 cases or 80.6%, then Vietnam second at 3,215 cases or 9.7%, and Malaysia third at 979 or 3.0%. Tobacco products and batteries are named categories in that series. Vietnam and Malaysia barely registered as origin countries before.

Two unconnected datasets pointing the same way is what moves this from trade-press narrative to a finding. One is industry reporting about where plants opened; the other is a Japanese border agency counting where counterfeit goods came from. Neither was produced with the other in mind.

Vietnam's position is worth reading carefully, because it is not a market. A national assembly resolution of 30 November 2024 bans the production, trade, import, possession, transport and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco from 1 January 2025. So Vietnamese entities appear in this chain as factories and exporters and never as sellers. Trans-Pacific partnership commitments also cap foreign ownership in tobacco-product manufacturing at 49% through a joint venture, which pushes vape projects to register under electronics or plastics business lines, so expect to find them under electronics industry codes rather than tobacco ones.

From the import side. The US publishes monthly imports under HTS 8543.40 by country of origin and port, free, through its international trade commission's data portal and the census trade service, a source already in this dataset's registry as the total that consignee-level manifest data should add up to. Indonesia's share of 8543.40 is the single number that measures the relocation.

1. Read Indonesia's and Vietnam's share of US 8543.40 imports month by month. A relocation changes origin mix first.
2. Reconcile against the origin side: Indonesia's statistics agency publishes export value and net weight at an eight-digit tariff line by partner country and month.
3. Confirm the specific plant through Indonesia's company-profile search and its one-stop business-licensing portal, where the business identification number is the universal key.
4. Watch Thailand's business-development data warehouse for Chinese-nationality shareholding appearing in newly registered Thai entities, it publishes investment broken down by shareholder nationality, free.
5. Do not track this from press releases. They are lumpy, promotional and silent about plants that quietly close.

In this dataset the import total it reconciles against is published as one figure with one wording: how many units are imported. The 0 importers of record behind that number each carry their own ports of entry and monthly volumes.

Better ownership data than anywhere else in the group. Indonesia's company registry operates searchable registers for limited companies, sole proprietorships, foundations, associations, fiduciary security and, the prize, beneficial owners. A statutory beneficial-ownership register is the only instrument in the region designed to answer who actually controls a company, and Indonesia is where the plants have gone.

Malaysia is the other jurisdiction worth watching, for a different reason: its companies commission sells shareholder particulars outright, at roughly RM10 to RM25 per document, so the parent-subsidiary link can simply be bought there. Its smoking-products registration regime under the 2024 act requires every imported, manufactured or distributed product to be registered, with a nicotine cap of 20 mg/ml and a 2 ml pod cap from October 2026, but a public searchable register of registered products was not located.

Questions people ask

Which companies have moved vape production out of China?

Four are named in trade-press reporting published on 15 November 2024: Smoore, with a plant in Malang, Indonesia from July 2022; Geekvape in Indonesia from 2023; Jin Jia Group, announced in August 2022; and Huizhou Zhijing Precision, a component facility from 2022. These are reported figures, not primary records.

What is the best way to measure the shift?

The country-of-origin mix of US imports under HTS 8543.40, published monthly and free. A relocated factory changes its country of origin before it changes anything else, so Indonesia's share of that tariff line is the measurement.

Can vapes be made in Vietnam?

Vietnam banned the production, trade, import, possession, transport and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco from 1 January 2025 under a resolution of 30 November 2024. It is a contract-assembly-for-export jurisdiction rather than a market, so Vietnamese entities appear as factories and exporters and never as sellers.

Sources

Every register, statute, agency or document the claims above rest on. Reachability notes are measurements taken from a United States vantage point and describe our access, not the standing of the source.

1. 2Firsts, Geekvape's Indonesian factory and the relocation of China's vape supply chainPublished 15 November 2024; the four named relocations and the 35% import-share figure come from here
2. 税関 知的財産侵害物品の差止実績 CY2024 (Japan Customs IP seizures)China 80.6%, Vietnam 9.7%, Malaysia 3.0% of cases; tobacco products and batteries named categories
3. Nghị quyết 173/2024/QH15, Vietnam's e-cigarette banDated 30 November 2024, in force 1 January 2025
4. Ditjen AHU, company and beneficial-owner profile search (Indonesia)Beneficial-owner register verified to exist; per-record fields unconfirmed
5. DBD DataWarehouse+ (Thailand)Free, Thai and English; publishes investment broken down by shareholder nationality
6. SSM e-Info (Malaysia)Shareholder particulars purchasable per document, roughly RM10 to RM25

Where this guide came from

Written from these passes of the internal source research, so a claim on this page can be traced back to the pass that produced it.

• research/sources-apac.md, Section A, the manufacturing shift (full table and tracking instrument)
• research/sources-apac.md, Section A, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand tables
• research/sources-apac.md, The four questions §3