Case study: a candle studio packs glass jars with a honeycomb roll

Glass jar candles are hard to ship for a simple reason. The heavy part, the wax, sits inside the fragile part, the jar. Every knock on the carton pushes the wax against the glass from the inside.

This is a worked example. The business is illustrative, put together from situations small sellers commonly face. The product details and the maths are real.

Who is the seller, and what is going wrong?

Picture a two-person candle studio in Pune. They pour scented candles into glass jars with lids, and the most common jar is about 8 cm across and 9 cm tall. They sell on Instagram and on their own website, and they ship about 200 orders a month.

Many orders are sets. A customer buys two candles for herself, or three as a gift. So let us assume an average of 1.5 jars per order.

That is about 300 jars a month.

Today they wrap each jar in plastic bubble wrap from a local shop and tape it shut. Two things bother them.

Every few weeks a customer sends a photo of a cracked jar or a chipped rim. They are not sure if the wrap, the box or the courier is to blame.
Their Instagram bio says "small batch, low waste". Then the customer opens the box and pulls out a wad of plastic. Some of them comment on it.

Diwali is also coming. It falls on Sunday, 8 November 2026 (as per the central government's 2026 holiday list), and for most candle and gifting sellers the weeks before it are the busiest of the year.

Why a honeycomb paper roll, and what else did they look at?

If I were packing for this studio, I would choose the honeycomb paper roll in the 100 m length, in one brand colour. The roll is 390 mm wide, and the 100 m length comes in blue, green, yellow, red, brown and black.

I would choose it for three reasons. It hugs a round jar, because the paper stretches into a honeycomb net and follows the curve. It holds itself, because the cells lock into each other, so there is no tape on the wrap. And it matches what the bio promises.

We make paper packaging in our own plant in Jaipur, and we have been manufacturing since 1997. So we have a bias towards paper, and we will also tell you below where paper is the wrong choice.

Here is what else they could use, honestly.

Option	Why it could work	The catch for this studio
Plastic bubble wrap (what they use now)	Good cushioning, works on wet routes	Clashes with the "low waste" promise, needs tape on every jar
Kraft paper bubble sheets, 300 x 400 mm	Paper, pre-cut	A flat sheet does not follow a round jar as well as a stretchy wrap
Honeycomb roll, 10 m, any of 7 colours	Cheap way to try the paper	Wraps only about 16 jars at 60 cm each, so it is a trial, not a supply
Honeycomb roll, 250 m, brown	Lowest cost per metre we sell	Brown only. If colour does not matter to your customers, take this one
Honeycomb roll, 100 m, in a colour	Colour for the unboxing, a size that suits 300 jars a month	Costs more per metre than the 250 m brown roll

That last line matters.

A coloured wrap is a branding choice, and you pay a little for it. If this studio's customers never film their unboxing, I would tell them to buy the 250 m brown roll and save the difference. For an Instagram brand, I think the colour earns its place.

We also compared the materials in detail in honeycomb paper vs bubble wrap, so I will not repeat that here.

Glass jar candles with wooden wicks lined up on a table before packing — Photo: Vlada Karpovich on Pexels

How should the studio pack one jar?

Our mothers packed achaar jars for relatives abroad the same way: wrap the jar, stuff the box, make sure nothing moves. The method has not changed much. Only the material has.

Check the lid. If it is a push-on lid, run one strip of tape across it and down the sides of the jar, so it cannot pop off in a knock.
Pull about 60 cm of paper from the roll and stretch it gently, so the cells open.
Stand the jar on its side at one end and roll it two full turns. A jar 8 cm across is about 25 cm round, so 60 cm gives two turns plus a little overlap. Tear the paper by hand.
The paper is 39 cm wide and the jar is 9 cm tall, so about 15 cm sticks out at each end. Fold it over the lid and under the base, and press. The cells hold it.
Put a layer of crumpled paper in the bottom of the carton. Set the jar in the centre.
Fill the sides and the top with crumpled paper. India Post's Parcel Packaging Standards ask for at least 6 cm between an item and the walls and corners of the box. For one jar of this size, that means a carton of roughly 20 x 20 x 21 cm.
For a set, wrap every jar separately and put a folded piece of honeycomb paper between them. The same India Post document says each item in a multi-item box should be wrapped and well separated.
Close the box and shake it hard. If anything moves, add paper.

I will be honest about step 6.

A 6 cm gap on every side makes the carton bigger, and a bigger carton can push the parcel into a higher volumetric weight slab. Some sellers go smaller and get away with it. If you want to try a tighter box, pack ten orders that way, drop each sealed carton from waist height onto a hard floor, and open them. Your floor will tell you more than my advice.

What are the numbers for a normal month and for Diwali?

At 60 cm per jar and 1.5 jars per order, the maths is simple. These are approximate, and the studio should replace 60 cm with its own measured number.

	Normal month	Four weeks before Diwali (assumed double)
Orders	200	400
Jars (1.5 per order)	300	600
Paper (60 cm per jar)	about 180 m	about 360 m
100 m coloured rolls needed	2 (with about 20 m left over)	4
Rolls to keep as a reserve	1	1
When to reorder	when you open the last full roll	by mid-October, before the rush

Double the orders before Diwali is my assumption for this example, not a forecast. Look at last year's October and November and use your own figure.

Why keep one roll spare? We dispatch in 1 to 2 working days, and the courier then needs its own time to reach Pune.

A studio that runs out on a Thursday in late October is wrapping candles in newspaper by Saturday.

We built a free honeycomb paper calculator to do this sum for you. Enter your paper per order in cm (90 cm here, for 1.5 jars) and your orders per month. It shows the metres you need and how long each roll lasts.

A coloured honeycomb paper roll opened out, with bottles wrapped in the same paper

What should the studio watch?

Paper does a good job on a jar like this.

It does not do every job.

Summer heat. No wrap stops wax from softening in a hot van in April or May. Ship early in the week, so parcels do not sit in a hub over the weekend. If you are worried, leave one packed carton in a parked car for an afternoon and look at the candle that evening.
The monsoon. Pune gets heavy rain from June to September. Keep the roll on a shelf, away from the floor and damp walls. On wet routes, put the finished carton inside a courier bag, because wet paper loses its strength.
Big candles. A large three-wick candle in thick glass is heavy. Honeycomb paper is made for light and medium fragile items. For the heaviest jars, add a second wrap and test with drops before you trust it.
Measuring the result. Write down every damage complaint with its order number for 60 days before the switch and 60 days after. Also note the metres used each week. Sellers often ask us whether a change in packing worked. Without those two lists, nobody can answer that, and we cannot either.

What would it take in your business?

You do not need to sell candles for this to apply. Any round glass product works the same way.

[ ] Wrap your hardest product once and measure the paper used, in cm.
[ ] Count your average items per order from last month's orders.
[ ] Multiply the two by your monthly orders to get metres a month.
[ ] Decide if colour matters to your customers. If not, look at the 250 m brown roll.
[ ] Pick a carton that leaves room for fill on every side, then drop-test it.
[ ] Keep one full roll in reserve, and plan festival stock a month ahead.
[ ] Track damage complaints for 60 days before and after the change.

If you are still choosing between a roll, sheets and a dispenser, which honeycomb paper size to buy has the full comparison. And if your product is a printed mug and you have no room for a roll at all, read our mug seller case study.

Send us a photo of your jar and its size through our contact page. We will tell you how much paper we would start with, and which carton we would try first.