Packaging material: the undisclosed savings factor

At a time when cocoa prices are soaring, chocolatiers worldwide are looking for ways to save money without compromising on quality. Besides the rising costs of cocoa and personnel, one cost item is often overlooked/not recognised by organisations as a way to save costs. And that’s packaging materials!

There are several ways to cut packaging-related costs. Take packaging designs that use less material, for example. That results in lower production, storage and transport costs per unit of packaging. 

Savings can also be achieved in the manufacturing process of the packaging itself: Many smaller chocolatiers still pack their chocolate bars by hand. Due to the limited speed that can be achieved, this is an expensive process in terms of price per bar. To increase packaging speed, some businesses choose prefabricated packaging. The packaging arrives at the chocolatier already folded and glued. Packaging speed then increases compared with folding and packing by hand. However, the labour costs that you save on the packer are then spent on the prefabricated packaging.

With our years of experience in the chocolate packaging industry, we can advise businesses on how best to achieve savings. Purchasing a packaging machine resolves the dilemma described above. The machine folds the packaging from an inner and outer layer, significantly increasing packaging speed and eliminating the need for pre-made packaging. 

A challenge facing one of our customers is described below. The customer told us that they paid €0.40 per pre-made sachet. Together with the customer, we designed a new packaging which better suited the folding principles of our machine. The customer was happy with the design, although stipulating that the brand identity of the product was key and should be retained. The new packaging consisted of a double-layered packaging with an aluminium foil inner layer and a printed paper outer layer. The foil could be bought in a role from a supplier while the outer layer could be printed and delivered without involving other costly activities. The result? Material costs reduced from €0.40 per packaged product to €0.10 per packaged product. A 75% saving!

Or, to translate it into chocolate terms, for an annual production of 100,000 bars, a saving of €30,000 on just the material costs of the packaging. When you add the savings in labour costs, packing chocolate suddenly becomes much more interesting!