Spotlight on… Chilli Penguin Stoves

This month, we make the journey to Wales to meet the team behind Chilli Penguin and to find out more about the history of the business, their sustainability values and where the unique company name came from. 

Back in 2001 company directors Stephen and Karen bought a stove for their first home. They loved the stove but thought they could make something even better. They had a design and engineering background and an idea about a little stove with an oven. From the very first sketches they made a wooden prototype and then found a company who could fabricate the components in steel. From building early prototypes in a garage, the company then moved to their first premises, an industrial unit in Caerphilly, South Wales and then a few years later to a workshop at the back of The Fire and Stove shop outside Cardiff, where they joined forces with Jim, the shop owner, who became the third director. 

In 2010 the company were able to move the business to its current base in Pwllheli on the beautiful Llŷn Peninsula. All fabrication and painting work is completed in house in Pwllheli. 

The team at Chilli Penguin are driven to care for our environment with sustainability in its widest sense forming part of their core values and aims. They proudly told David that they love the idea of stoves, objects that warm homes and lives, that can be fuelled by a renewable resource like trees. They want their stoves to burn as efficiently and cleanly as possible, with their product range proudly displaying the HETAS Cleaner Choice certification, in addition to having been Ecodesign compliant for many years and tested for use in smoke control areas. 

Chilli Penguin are constantly working towards reducing their impact on the environment. They use wooden pallets, cardboard packaging, wood wool and shredded waste paper where possible. Company brochures, posters and stove top advertising are printed on FSC paper and use vegetable ink. Chilli Penguin’s branded signs are made from wood and they use a compostable bag to cover stoves with. The pallet wraps are plastic but can be recycled and they are actively looking for an alternative to this. Where incoming products to the workshop are wrapped in non-bio-degradable packaging they will try to reuse this. The company premises are, of course, heated by penguins burning wood. 

Recently the team at Chilli Penguin made use of some scrap pallets to create vegetable planters for staff. This has been such a success that the products are now also sold in the Chilli Penguin showroom, with the money raised going to support a local mental health charity.