Thursday 16th July 2026
Caring for your delivery
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Your chocolates have travelled in an insulated 'ecowool' liner with slow-release gel packs, designed to protect them through warm weather. When your box arrives, please don't put it straight into a fridge, chiller cabinet or cold room — a sudden drop in temperature causes condensation to form on the surface of the chocolate, which can leave it looking dull, grainy or streaky (known as "bloom"). It's still completely safe to eat, it just won't look or feel its best.
Instead, unpack the chocolate, (or at least open the outer box and remove the top ‘ecowool’ layer), and let them settle somewhere cool and dry for an hour or two to gradually come to room temperature – away from direct sunlight.
The science, if you're curious:
Here's the
annoying truth about temperature for chocolate lovers: it always wants to warm
up cool items to equalise the temperature — that's the second law of
thermodynamics at work. The cool air in your box is constantly trying to match
with the warmer air outside it. No amount of insulation can stop that entirely;
its job is to slow the rate it happens. To slow this rate even more, you need
something in the box that actively cools the air faster than the insulation
lets it in.
The
'ecowool' liner slows that heat transfer down. It's made from recycled
polyester fibre (70–80% from recycled plastic bottles), formed into a padded
wadding that traps still air within its fibres. Trapped air is a poor conductor
of heat, which is what gives the liner its insulating value — measured at a
thermal conductivity of 0.03926 W/mK, (if you really wanted to know) — meaning
heat passes through it very slowly compared to the cardboard box alone.
The gel
packs do the active cooling. They're frozen to a low temperature before
dispatch, and as they slowly change from solid back to liquid they draw heat
out of the box without their own temperature rising much – due to water having
an exceptionally high 'latent heat of fusion', ie the energy needed to change
from solid to liquid. That's what gives a steady, hours-long cooling effect
rather than a short, sharp one, and it took a fair bit of trial and (melted)
error, and some clever mathematics, on our part to get the balance of liner and
gel pack right.
What to
expect on arrival: the outer box may feel warm to the touch — that's normal,
it's the insulation absorbing outside heat before it reaches the chocolate. The
gel packs may feel soft or partly melted rather than solid; that means they've
done their job. The chocolates themselves should feel cool, not warm and
certainly not frozen.
For the best
result, keep the box somewhere at a steady temperature, (around 16°C indoors is
ideal), before opening.
Recycling your packaging
● 'Ecowool'
liner: made with 64% recycled material and is 100% recyclable. You can reuse it
for your own packing needs or put it straight in your household/business
recycling bin — no need to separate it out further.
● Gel packs:
the cooling gel is a non-toxic, non-hazardous absorbent gel (sodium
polyacrylate), safe to handle. The whole pack can be refrozen and reused
numerous times, and you can cut the sheet into individual pouches for smaller
cooling needs. The empty outer pouch is a mixed-material film and isn't
currently accepted in standard curbside recycling, so please place it in
general waste. You can cut open the pouch and rinse the gel contents down the
sink with plenty of water if you wish.
● Outer box: 100% recyclable. You can reuse it for your own packing needs or put it straight in your household/business recycling bin