Believe it or not, all candles are not born equal! From factory to handmade and everything between, there's a few things that dictate the finish, quality and ultimately the price of a scented candle, when you consider how they're actually made. Let's dive in...
Factory Method - This is where a factory, with dozens of staff have hundreds or even thousands of candle glasses on conveyor belts. They use a large machine, with a nozzle, that pours the wax in to the glasses as the conveyor belt moves along. Typically, these products will be among the cheapest in the market. Not necessarily due to quality, they still need to abide by legislation and safety requirements, but the scale means for every 1 hour of time, they can fill and box dozens of candles. This process can go on for several hours per day. At one end of the factory, a couple of people will load the candle glasses on to conveyor belts, the next set of people will add the wicks, then someone will come along with a big nozzle that's connected to a vat of pre-blended and melted wax. The nozzle controls the speed and temperature of the wax as it fills the container. Once full, the candle glass makes its way along to a drying area, before the final stage, where they're manually packed in to pre-printed boxes, with any labels being put on by the final member of staff. A factory can easily churn out 1,000 candles per week, maybe even more!
Traditional Method - This is typically referred to as 'hand-poured', however, some companies believe that hand-poured simply refers to people pointing a nozzle in to a glass. At Country & Cove, we believe 'hand-poured' should refer to the traditional method of a candle maker individually blending the wax and fragrance oils in-house, then testing the temperature with a thermometer, to make sure the correct 'pour temperature' is reached. Let's explain a little further. We use CocoSoy wax in our candles, we heat this to 80 degrees until fully melted, then let it cool to 65 degrees, add the fragrance oil at 8% and then stir manually with a big paddle for 2 minutes. Once the temperature reaches 60 degrees, it's time to pour. We use a big jug, pouring each candle individually to a fill line at the top. The candles are then placed on a drying rack over night, as the wax needs to fully set in the container before we can box them up. During the boxing process, we clean the glasses with a white, cotton cloth and remove any wax drips from the top of the container. We trim the wicks to 1/4 inch and then sit down for the labelling part, where we add the product label to the front and the CLP safety label to the bottom of the glass, with the correct ingredients and allergens highlighted for consumers. Then the glasses are either packed in to the boxes for wholesale or placed in a gift box, for our customers on Etsy!
As you can see, there's a significant time and cost difference between factory and hand-poured. It takes us at-least 2 days to make and pack a candle at Country & Cove, something a factory can do in minutes.
We believe that when you purchase something handmade, it should truly use traditional, age-old methods. Our candles won't be £5.99 on the shelves of your local discount homeware store, but when you do purchase a Country & Cove candle, you'll know each one has been hand-poured by an artisan candle maker, in a little studio, at the edge of the North Yorkshire coast and we think that's alright!
