A 70-year-old business has been forced to close because of the sugar tax, its owner said.

Darlene Livingston said that her business, RM Roberts Candy Wholesale, on Court Street, Hamilton, would still be around if not for the levy introduced last October.

Ms Livingston said: “The economics have changed.”

She said that in addition to the increased cost to stock her shelves “the sugar tax has diminished the value of your business, if sugar is your business”.

Ms Livingston explained: “It’s designed to change the mindset — and when you change the mindset it automatically means a slowing of sales.

“And we’ve experienced that.”

RM Roberts Candy Wholesale sells directly to several retailers, including MarketPlace grocery stores, the Phoenix stores and People’s Pharmacy.

Ms Livingston this week announced to her customers in a letter that her business was to close.

She wrote: “This is not what was anticipated a year ago, but unfortunately the imposition by the Government of Bermuda of the new sugar tax has impacted all the brands we carry.

“Given the second installation amounting to a further 25 per cent import duty will be imposed April 1, we have made the difficult decision that the candy business in no longer viable.”

The business was founded by Ruigg M. Roberts, her late uncle, seven decades ago after he came out of the military.

She said that her decision to close would have been difficult for her family member to accept.

Ms Livingston said: “He was a man that never had children — this was his child. This was his family. This was everything that he represented.

“I have done my best, I think, to preserve the legacy of the business — but I can’t compete with this.”

She said that she had written the letter to her customers last week but had not sent it until Monday.

Ms Livingston explained: “I do that when there’s a lot of emotion in something I have written.”

She took over the business in 2006.

Ms Livingston said: “Profits were always good. I had excellent relationships with my customers — relationships that I had invested in and built on. Relationships that I nurtured.”

The rate of duty on items covered by the tax is 50 per cent.

Curtis Dickinson, the Minister of Finance, announced in his Budget Statement last Friday that an additional 25 per cent would be implemented from April 1 and that a wider selection of items would be taxed.

Ms Livingston said that she was interested to see what impact the 75 per cent rate would have on other businesses.

She said that people had told her that demand for her products would remain despite the tax.

But Ms Livingston added: “Maybe not. Maybe they’ll buy some of those imported Oreo cookies that are not subject to the sugar tax before they buy my candy, because it’s going to be the old price.

“So people’s habits — they’ll continue to take sweet, but they’ll take it in the cheaper forms.”

She said the way that the sugar tax had been implemented was “discriminatory”.

Ms Livingston explained that only certain customs duty numbers have been assigned to fall under the sugar tax.

She explained: “I sell gummy candy. Gummy candy falls under that number.

“But if I sold Cadbury chocolates, I wouldn’t be impacted.”

She asked: “Where is the beginning and the end of this? And why should I be taxed over the person who imports chocolate?”

Ms Livingston said that she had dealt with feelings of angst, anger and uncertainty about the impact the tax would have on her business.

She added: “Then you come to a point of peace, I think, where no one has listened, when the process has rolled into law, into enactment, into practice ... then it’s just resignation.”

Ms Livingston said that with any significant change like the sugar tax “there have to be some casualties”. She added: “I just happen to be one of them.”

Kim Wilson, the Minister of Health, told MPs last June that legislation similar to the sugar tax elsewhere had been shown to reduce consumption of sugary drinks and other products linked to serious health problems, such as diabetes and obesity. She told the House of Assembly: “I can’t emphasise enough that these preventable, lifestyle-induced chronic diseases are crippling our country both physically and financially.”

Ms Wilson called the tax a “fundamental part” of the Government’s commitment “to reduce these conditions which are costing us so dearly”.