Chocolate with a conscience
Chjoko is a small family-run business which delivers premium chocolate with a Finnish twist. It values freshness, craftmanship and carefully-selected ingredients. “The traceability of our ingredients is really important to us,” says Mika Gröndahl, Chjoko’s founder and master chocolatier. “We try to use local and ethically-sourced ingredients wherever possible. Of course, they have to taste great too .”
Chjoko is a family-run business at heart – Mika’s wife Laura is also heavily involved with running the kitchen, two stores and the popular online service. They had heard about Stora Enso’s Packaging Development & Design team, a dedicated group of sustainable design experts who work directly alongside each customer to find a bespoke packaging solution that best fits their needs. Sirpa Välimaa is Lead for Stora Enso’s Innovation Center for Fiber Products and part , which forms the Helsinki-based part of this global team. It was Sirpa and a few colleagues who first met with Chjoko to assess their needs.
“A few minutes in Mika and Laura’s company was all we needed to realise there were a lot of shared values, both in our approaches to work and what we look for in packaging,” says Sirpa. “It turns out that chocolate and packaging also have a few things in common; quality, traceability and using the best ingredients are all key.”
With Mika’s passion for traceability, it makes sense that he and Laura were looking for packaging with a similar profile. They were preparing for the upcoming festive season and wanted a sustainably-sourced, locally-manufactured box that would do justice to their popular line of pralines, which customers are able to individually select in-store or online. The product’s packaging at the time came from China. It consisted of a pre-assembled box with a raised stage on which the contents lay, which meant it took up a lot of space prior to use. It also had a transparent plastic lid.
Building around the customer’s needs
Sirpa’s team ascertained that Chjoko would benefit from a solution that replaced plastics with renewable materials, while maintaining the brand’s stylish black-and-white aesthetic and the tagline “Chjoko: Made in Helsinki”. Furthermore, it had to travel well in order to meet the flavor and protective requirements for the company’s online delivery service. Chjoko’s praline selection are hand-selected by customers and can be purchased as boxes of four, eight, sixteen or twenty-four pieces, so a versatile and adjustable size needed to be decided upon as well.
One final twist – it had to be ready to meet the holiday season rush that Chjoko faces each year. This was a tall order, given that the initial meetings took place when there were only a limited number of working weeks available in which to complete the project.
“We assisted the customer with everything from ideation to hand over. The new design is now locally produced in Helsinki by Grano, and the packages are delivered flat to the brand owner, clearing up space with an optimized, modular design that was updated to four sizes to better fit the varying portion sizes on offer.”
Finding the solution that leaves a great taste
The rest of the package used Stora Enso’s Foodbox for the box itself, an uncoated natural surface befits the authentic, hand-crafted product inside, while CKB lined with black PE protected the delicate chocolates from external factors.
The package improves Chjoko’s sustainability performance, with a locally-made, renewables-first approach capped off by the eye-catching yet classic design completed by Anna Kjellberg, a designer at Stora Enso. The new refreshed packaged was launched for the Christmas market last year to praise from Chjoko’s customers.
“We have heard only good things from our customers about the packaging,” confirms Mika Gröndahl. “Finally we have packaging that matches the contents!”
“Working with Chjoko combined two of our favourite things in the world – local Finnish delicacies and reducing the amount of non-renewable plastics in packaging,” says Sirpa Välimaa. “It also goes to show what can be done when the common passion for better, sustainable materials is shared.”
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