Materials
Materials encompasses everything our products are made from, including the packaging they are shipped in. Using quality materials that stand the test of time is one of Chilly’s core values. As we’ve grown, we’ve explored using more responsibly sourced materials, while maintaining the same quality we are known for.
Our ambition for our packaging is to protect our products so they are delivered into our customers’ hands in good condition, while also minimising the resources used to create it.
Product materials
At Chilly’s we are constantly trying to improve on and innovate our products. From June 2023-June 2024, we made two giant strides forward regarding the materials we use to create our products:
· Launched 90% recycled stainless steel range in March 2024
· Launched internal procurement tool February 2024
Chilly’s 90% Recycled Stainless Steel
Our 90% Recycled Stainless Steel products are the next level of Chilly’s product and material innovation.
The range’s metal bodies are made from post-consumer verified recycled stainless steel with a new embossed logo and all the same features as our existing Series 2 products.
We are in the process of changing all metal body repeat purchase orders of our Series 2 products to 90% Recycled Stainless Steel.
We are also using it for new products being developed, with the exception of products that are bigger than 2 litres because they require a thicker metal body. These larger products require thicker stainless steel to maintain our durability and quality requirements. However, at the moment, we are unable to switch to recycled stainless steel for this thickness due to not meeting the minimum order requirements for the raw material. We are not going to be making enough products to use all of the metal we’d need to buy to meet the MOQ, which means we’d have wasted material that is not used. As we develop new products, we’ll be monitoring this to see if we can switch to 90% Recycled Stainless Steel in the future for these products. We are also working with our supplier to see if they are able to use the 90% Recycled Stainless Steel for other products being made for other clients. This way, we can meet the MOQ as a group.
We will continue to use the recycled stainless steel as a default for all cups, bottles and food pots, and only where required for the performance of the product will we investigate an alternative.
We established a target last year to “create all newly designed products using recycled steel from 2024”. We are changing this slightly to reflect this, and allowing for alternatives to be used where required for quality or where supply prevents its use.
Procurement strategy and tool
Chilly’s has developed clear material guidance through our responsible sourcing guidelines, which will be used to identify preferred material types. Our ambition is that by 2024, 100% of materials sourced for Chilly’s products will be aligned with this guidance.
Chilly’s launched its responsible sourcing guide and tool in February 2024, with the target of ensuring all teams will have been trained by the end of the year to ensure it is being used consistently across the business.
Along with specific material guidance, the procurement strategy and tool includes a tiered approach to supplier engagement and requirements depending on the amount we will spend with the supplier in one year and supplier risk category.
The supplier risk category has been determined through Sedex’s Radar tool, a risk assessment tool. Sedex has a wealth of data on risks and issues within supply chains. Using this data, the tool identifies the risks related to a location and type of industry. From this it flags the most likely issues to occur when sourcing for a specific supplier type, and in a specific location.
Chilly’s has used this information to empower its team to ask the right questions and undertake due diligence with a focus on potential risk areas.
Packaging materials
In our Responsibility Strategy, we declared our commitment to: “reduce packaging and establish a measurable target by end of 2023”.
Over the last year, we have:
· Measured our packaging, with a focus on direct product packaging
· Made changes which have resulted in a reduction in the amount of packaging we use
· Established a reduction target and a long-term strategy to reduce our product packaging use in line with this
Packaging reduction
In 2023/24, we took steps to reduce the impact of our ecommerce shipping packaging:
- Eliminate use of single use ecommerce plastic bags
We have introduced a new size of shipping box for our large products that were shipped in plastic polybags. We have instructed our warehouse to not use these bags for future orders.
We have already seen the positive impacts of This. In 2022, we used 4362 (4290 large and 72 small) ecommerce plastic bags. We saw this decrease by around half in 2023, using 2128 (1931 large and 197 small) ecommerce plastic bags.
-Change from standard jiffy bags with plastic bubble wrap to fully paper-based jiffy bags
In 2023, we used 34,788 jiffy bags, weighing around 352.3kg. By switching to fully paper-based bags, all of this can be easily recycled by our customers.
-Switching from plastic to paper tape
We worked with our tier 1 supplier, who is responsible for assembling and shipping our finished products to our warehouses, to switch from plastic tape to paper tape. This will help to reduce the use of plastic in our supply chain.
Introduce new sizes of our ecommerce shipping boxes
We introduced two new ecommerce boxes intended to ship a single product, and resized our ecommerce boxes intended to ship two and three core products.
The resizing of our boxes for two and three core products was to allow for our Series 2 products to fit better. These boxes are designed to shut more effectively, reducing the need to seal them with tape.
We introduced two new boxes designed for a single core product, to be used in conjunction with our current single ecommerce shipping box.
Our core products range from the short OG 260ml bottle and Series 2 340ml coffee cup to significantly taller OG 1.8l bottle and Series 2 1l bottle. By having three box sizes, we can use smaller boxes for the smaller products, resulting in an overall reduction of packaging.
If we had used these new single box sizes in 2022 instead of the alternative packaging used, we would have saved 643.6kg of cardboard and 97.6kg of plastic.
*This table relates to where a single core product (insulated bottle, coffee cup or food pot) has been bought in a single transaction via Chilly’s website.
The data excludes the Series 2 Flip products (as they were not on sale in 2022) and Series 2 products sold in B2C boxes (these have been designed so that single products can be shipped without an outer ecommerce box. These products are only shipped inside outer ecommerce boxes when requested to be gift wrapped by a customer, or orders multiple products).
Packaging target
Reduce direct product packaging by at least 70% for bottles, coffee cups and food pots for B2B and B2C products, where product packaging relates to the packaging directly on the outside of the product (tube and Series 2 black box), and does not include the leaflet.
As part of our plan to reduce our packaging in line with this, we’ll be launching a new product packaging solution. Our ambition is to launch this in Q3/4 2024.
We have not specified a date by which we intend to achieve this reduction, as we are taking a staggered approach to introducing the new packaging solution. This is because a new packaging solution comes with operational challenges. Our priority is to ensure that our products arrive in the hands of our customers in perfect condition. Because of this, it is essential that as we introduce this packaging, we monitor and develop the approach as we roll it out to other product ranges.
For Chilly’s products packaged specifically for Amazon, we are developing a SIPP (Ships in Product Packaging) solution for Amazon. This will be designed and ready to be rolled out to products sold on Amazon by the end of 2024.
As we roll out our new solutions, we will continue to measure our packaging usage to assess how effective these new measures are at reducing it.
