Production sizes: aluminium bottles as standard
All fragrance or essential oil sizes from 50g upwards are supplied in aluminium bottles.
Aluminium is the industry standard for fragrance concentrates, and has been for decades. Walk into any fragrance house or compounding facility and this is what you will find on the shelves. The reasons are simple: aluminium is completely impermeable to oxygen and light, the two main enemies of a fragrance oil. It is chemically inert against aroma chemicals, so the container never participates in the chemistry of what’s inside it. And it is effectively unbreakable in transit, which neither glass nor PET can claim.
Very few suppliers offer aluminium at quantities this small. Most reserve it for bulk drums and pails, if they use it at all, and ship everything below a kilogram in plastic. We consider aluminium the correct container for the product at any production size, so we use it from 50g upwards and absorb the cost difference into our standard pricing. There is no packaging surcharge and no premium tier. It is simply how your fragrance arrives.
Our bottles are produced by Tournaire in Grasse, France, a manufacturer that has supplied the perfume industry for nearly two centuries. They are made with recycled aluminium, and aluminium itself is infinitely recyclable without any loss of material quality. The bottle that protects your fragrance today can become another bottle tomorrow, indefinitely.
When your order arrives in an aluminium bottle, it is stored the same way the fragrance industry stores its own concentrates. That is the standard we think professional makers should expect.
Why 10g testers ship in PET bottles
Our 10g tester bottles are supplied in PET plastic because they are designed as functional testing units, not premium presentation bottles, neither long storage formats.
The purpose of the tester size is to make fragrance evaluation accessible, affordable, and safe to ship. At this scale, packaging has a major impact on the final cost. Using the same premium aluminium packaging as our larger bottles would make the tester format considerably more expensive and less practical for customers who simply want to evaluate a scent before ordering larger quantities.
Tester bottles are also prepared in very small batches and require careful individual handling, filling, labelling, checking, and packing. This makes the 10g format much more labour-intensive than it may appear from the outside.
We previously trialled glass bottles for samples, but breakage during transit made them unreliable. PET offers the best balance for this specific purpose: lightweight, durable, safe to ship, and cost-efficient. For this reason, our 10g testers prioritise practical evaluation and safe delivery. Premium aluminium packaging is reserved for larger bottle sizes, where it makes more sense commercially and environmentally.
If you keep a fragrance library
Some customers retain samples for future reference and product development. If that’s you, you have two options:
- Transfer your samples into glass laboratory bottles with phenolic or PTFE-lined caps shortly after they arrive. Amber glass, filled close to the top and stored cool and dark, will preserve both the oil and the container.
- Or request aluminium packaging for your samples in the order comments before checkout. We will confirm the additional packaging cost with you before processing the order, and your samples will arrive in the same archival-grade containers as our production sizes.
Sample kit exception
Sample kits are pre-packed in 10g PET tester bottles to keep fragrance discovery affordable, consistent, and efficient. Because these kits are prepared in advance, aluminum packaging upgrades are not available for sample kits.