Every year over 150 million chocolate Santa Claus are produced in the aluminum foil coat for the Christmas season in Europe. That's an increase of about 1 percent over 2016, and with an average packaging size of 0.025 square meters per figure, that's more than 3,750,000 square meters.

Almost all chocolate hollow figures are wrapped in shiny and colorful aluminum foil. This tradition is very old: the first figures of Santa Claus were made around 1820 of solid chocolate. About 20 years later, they were first produced as a hollow body in the form used today. Many European packaging companies have a long tradition of producing foils and printing foils for Santa Claus, Easter bunnies and other chocolate figures. The patented process by which aluminum foil is manufactured and rolled industrially has existed for over 100 years.