Incense in The Wind: Foil wrapped incense

Saturday 6 January 2018

Foil wrapped incense

There are a number of foil wrapped incense brands here in the UK - Mystic Incense, Red Dragon (Ancient Wisdom), Moroccan Bazaar, Tangy Gifts, Zam Zam, Famous Fragrance, etc. Each packet tends to contain between eighteen to twenty sticks around 13 - 13 1/2 inches long. The sticks are bamboo, coated with a paste which apparently contains cypress, tabu bark, and Chinese juniper. The stick is then dipped in a perfume solvent of essential oils giving a sweet, modern scent. They all carry the same scent range (African Cush, Black Love, Baby Powder, etc), have very similar packaging (apart from the Red Dragon), and all (apart from the Red Dragon) say they are made in the UK. I looked on American sites, and these are same brands sold in the US, and all are shipped from the UK. They retail for between £1.20 and £2.60 (average price seems to be £1.99), with trade prices around 30p - 40p per packet, which would include labour and materials. I assume that the blanks are being imported from somewhere like Vietnam, and then dipped en-mass here with a perfume solvent made here, and quickly wrapped in foil. I don't know who makes them. Moroccan Bazaar - who stopped production in July 2017 - have been making incense in the UK since 1970, while Zam Zam were founded in 1980. It might be that Moroccan Bazaar have sold the production to Zam Zam. Perhaps someone knows and will tell me the story...