For William Fugard, chief executive and co-founder of Gusto Organic, headaches caused by issues beyond his control are an occupational hazard.

The terms on which the UK decided to leave the European Union meant that – in 2019 – the cost of exporting a pallet of his firm’s premium soft drinks went from £70 to £300 almost overnight.

Then, having successfully shouldered those export costs and dealt with the painful energy price shock sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the last 12 months have dealt Fugard with an 80 per cent hike on the price of his drinks’ premium ingredients.

Finally, just three weeks ago, his manufacturing plant told him it would be raising its prices by 18 per cent largely because of the employer national insurance (NICs) hikes coming into force in April.

“Every aspect of what we do is under attack,” he tells City AM. “Everything has gone up.”

But the biggest threat posed to Gusto – one Fugard brands, somewhat forlornly, as “existential” – isn’t down to the inflationary nature of two years’ worth of febrile geopolitics – and nor is it due to last Autumn’s Budget.

The the real concern the entrepreneur – who set up Gusto with Green & Black’s grandee Craig Sams in 2012 – stems from something that appears far more innocuous: the glass bottles he stores his drinks in, and the way those bottles are about to be taxed.

Come October, Gusto – and all UK-based producers of goods – will be subject to a new levy known as the extended producer responsibility for packing (EPR). Applied to all forms of packaging – from cardboard boxes to plastic containers – the new tax aims to get the producers of recyclable waste to pay for local authority services.

All in all, the scheme is expected to raise £1.6bn annually, the proceeds from which will be dished out to the cash-strapped local councils that are currently responsible for carrying out – or more usually subcontracting – recycling in Britain.

The scheme has been hailed by some – including Labour donor Dale Vince – as an important way of encouraging UK producers to use less packaging or switch to materials that are less environmentally damaging.

Vince, the Ecotricity founder and environmental campaigner, told City AM that putting a price on packaging was crucial if we are to effectively “reduce the amount of pollution we have, and waste we need to dispose of”.

But to the thousands of businesses on which the levy will be imposed – particularly those, like Fugard’s Gusto that use glass – this acts as another painful headwind after consecutive years of difficult domestic trading.

“It’s going to be horrifically inflationary for us,” the founder says. “On top of everything else, our manufacturers have been trying to come after us for a 5p a bottle increase in what they charge, which would extrapolate out to more for the consumer. The trading condition is really unpleasant.”

Producers like Gusto will be among the worst affected by the levy due to the manner in which charges are applied on packaging materials based on their weight.

In an attempt to discourage excessive plastic use, the levy on the hard-to-recycle and single-use material is expected to be twice that of glass. And yet, because glass packaging of equivalent items is roughly seven times heavier than plastic or aluminium, it nets out as over three times more painful for glass packaging producers.

“We’ve got a situation where glass, which is the least offensive packaging format on the planet, and easiest to recycle, will be taxed more than plastic,” Fugard says.