Filled to order
Materials are decanted when you order rather than pulled from pre-filled stock sitting on a shelf. It costs us a day; it means the headspace above your material is hours old rather than months.
That matters most for the materials that suffer for it: citrus oils and other terpene-rich naturals oxidise in a part-full bottle, and an aldehyde left in air does not improve. Filling to order keeps time in the bottle to a minimum before it reaches you.
Evaluation dilutions and kit fills are prepared in our own laboratory to a stated strength in a named solvent — see our standards.
Containers
Container choice follows the material, not the order value.
- Amber glass for anything light-sensitive, which is most of what we sell. Clear glass is used only where seeing the material matters more than shielding it.
- Phenolic or PTFE-lined caps for aromatic materials. Plain plastic liners are attacked by many of these chemicals — a cap that degrades will contaminate the contents and eventually leak.
- Fluorinated HDPE for larger volumes of solvents, where glass is a hazard at weight.
- Reducers and drop inserts on small sizes, so you can dose a viscous material without pouring it.
Solid and semi-solid materials — some absolutes, resinoids and crystalline chemicals — are packed in wide-mouth containers you can actually get a spatula into.
Labelling
Every bottle leaves with the information you need to use it and to reorder it:
- Material name and, where applicable, CAS number
- Dilution strength and solvent, where the material is not neat
- Net quantity
- Lot reference, so the certificate of analysis for your bottle can be issued
- Applicable GHS hazard information
Lot assignment and the records behind it are a requirement of operating under cGMP in an FDA-registered facility, which is why we can issue a certificate against the specific bottle you received rather than a generic one. See our standards for both registrations.
Keep the lot reference. It is the only way to obtain the certificate of analysis or allergen statement that describes what you actually formulated with — which you will need if you compile a product safety report.
Packed for transit
Orders are packed to survive parcel handling rather than to look impressive. Bottles are sealed and individually bagged, packed with absorbent material, and boxed with enough void fill that a failure in one container does not reach the rest of your order.
Many of these materials are regulated as flammable liquids in transport, which constrains how they can be packed and routed. Our shipping information covers what that means for your order, including air restrictions.
Storing what you receive
The packaging protects a material to your door; after that it is down to how you keep it.
- Cool, dark and tightly closed. A cupboard away from radiators and sunlight beats a bench.
- Upright, so the closure is not in constant contact with the material.
- Minimise headspace on materials you use slowly — decanting into a smaller bottle as the level drops genuinely extends the life of citrus oils.
- Away from ignition sources, and out of reach of children and animals.
- Let refrigerated materials reach room temperature before opening, or condensation gets in.
Shelf life and storage guidance are published on each material's page where we hold them.
Waste & materials
We reuse incoming cartons and void fill where they are clean and sound, so your order may arrive in a box that has made a journey before. It is not a lapse in care — sending a serviceable carton to landfill to replace it with a new one is worse for everybody.
Glass and cartons are recyclable once free of material. Bottles that held aromatic chemicals should be rinsed with alcohol before recycling, and the rinse treated as chemical waste rather than poured down a drain.
We would rather over-pack a fragile order than have it arrive broken, so some parcels contain more protective material than looks necessary.