While the winter months are long and cold, they do have positive implications when it comes to shipping chocolate. Colder weather means colder shipping temperatures, which makes it easier and cheaper to prevent chocolate from melting while in transit.
Shipping chocolate using web fulfillment, including FedEx or UPS Ground, comes with certain difficulties, and various considerations must be made to prevent goods from spoiling while on their way to your customers. Questions you should ask include:
Key Considerations for Shipping Chocolate
Shipping chocolate for web fulfillment, including FedEx or UPS Ground, comes with certain difficulties, and various considerations must be made to prevent goods from being damaged while on their way to your customers. Here are some key questions to consider when shipping chocolate:
- How long can my chocolates stay in transit?
Some companies will ship chocolate overnight to avoid melting and blooming. Keeping transit times short is a good strategy but has grown to be too expensive recently.
These companies will use a 24 hour insulated box liner and gel packs to stretch out the transit time or combat warmer weather.Shipping chocolate using 2-3 day shipping is possible with thicker insulators like our EcoLiner and CelluLiner. Adding gel packs to thicker insulated box liners will improve the overall performance of the packout. - Check the weather forecast for your specific route of shipping. Developing historical data of temperatures along routes can help you identify situations where your shipping methods fail.
- Building out seasonal temperature profiles for testing common transits for shipping chocolate.(requires thermal testing chambers.
- A winter shipment of chocolate will call for a thinner liner (plastic bubble and metalized film) and little to no ice packs depending on the route and shipping duration.
- A summer shipment or an extreme weather period might require a different pack out: more gel packs, humidity protection, foam, fiber insulator at least 1” thick.
- Temperature control is the key to shipping chocolate. You have to make sure the container’s internal temperature is not too cold for too long to prevent blooming. And you also have to ensure your chocolates don’t get too hot and melt.
The way to get to the perfect temperature for shipping chocolate is to find the perfect balance of gel packs, insulator and box size. Which is why we recommend talking to one of our experts before committing to large orders. We even send out insulated box liner samples. - Lastly, you’ll want to think about your pack-out, or the way you arrange items in your box. Reducing the moisture collected inside your package is key to preventing damage from condensation. Generally, less air space is a best practice.
If your operation is large enough we recommend using our sweat proof gel packs, but craftier solutions also work, like wrapping the chocolate box in bubble wrap/paper to prevent condensation damage or putting the gel pack in a plastic bag.
In terms of ice pack placement, we’ve seen companies put one ice pack on top and one on bottom like a sandwich. We’re partial to putting the cold packs on top and letting the cold air sink to the bottom.