This year was a record for Paris Packaging Week, the packaging fair dedicated to packaging for cosmetics and perfumes. Trendwatcher Dominique Huret, from Cape Decision in Brussels, reports for PKN on innovations that caught her eye.
Texen Beauty Partners
Texen Beauty Partners were a stand out among the crowd, with a special limited-edition packaging for Lancôme. Inspired by nine masterpieces of sculpture and the lights and colours of the Louvre Museum, Lancôme has created a new skincare and make-up collection : Lancôme x Louvre. To reproduce the very high quality of the photo art, Texen used the heat transfer label technique, in which a printed film is applied by heat. The Lancôme logo was then added by hot stamping.
Inca
Italian aluminium packaging producer, Inca, presented its 100 per cent aluminium mono-material capsules collection, which is designed to answer most demands of the cosmetic and perfumery market. The underlying technological innovation makes it possible to fully customise the packaging for any tailor-made projects. The Inca logo on top of the lids is inscribed in Braille, to put the emphasis on the sensory experience of touching the metal.
Quadpack
A dropper tube named The Wanderer was showcased by beauty packaging manufacturer Quadpack. Targeted at skin and hair care, the dropper tube includes a unique flow control disc, dispensing the flow of the product.
A fun offering is Quadpack’s ShapeUp Stick, a refillable stick which dispenses product in a personalised shape. This airtight solution for skincare and makeup formulas is made of mono material PP, while the cap and base can be made of PCR PP. ShapeUp Stick is patented in Spain, and patent pending in other territories, including the US.
Finally, Quadpack and Aptar Beauty have jointly developed a refillable lipstick. In a spirit of collaborative innovation, the two companies have blended their respective expertise in wood and stick mechanisms to create the Woodacity lipstick. Compatible with most filling lines without any adjustments, POM-free, glue-free and lubricant-free, the mechanism allows perfectly smooth actuation of the bullet.
Hoffmann Neopac
Hoffmann Neopac, specialist in packaging for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics segments, showcased the LowPro Flip-Top capsule range. Available in PP, PE and up to 40 per cent food-grade rPE material, with a gloss or matt finish, LowPro Caps fit with Neopac’s range of durable tubes. They fit with extruded tubes (35-50 mm diameter) made of sugarcane, recycled plastic or Picea spruce. Neopac’s Picea tube is made from spruce sawdust and a plastic matrix made from sugar-based raw materials. The proportion of spruce wood is 10 per cent, the sugar-based proportion is 85 per cent.
Aptar
Aptar will launch its Future Airless PET packaging. Produced in collaboration with Pinard Beauty Pack, this large-format 400 ml bottle combines Aptar’s Future PE pump with Pinard’s patented, fully recyclable PET Airless bottle. Also planned for 2024 is the production of the new actuators. Named after iconic artists, Ringo, Nora and Tina are made with the “twist to lock technology”, eliminating the need for an overcap.
Ball
Ball announced its use of Eyeris printing technology for aerosols. The lightweight aluminium aerosol cans with ReAl are up to 30 per cent lighter than standard cans, helping to reduce transport-related emissions. However, the widespread adoption of lightweighting has led to standardised can shapes and size, meaning less variety. To ensure that brands and on-pack promotions stand out on the shelves, Ball designed the Eyeris technology for beverage packaging and is now applying it to impact extruded aerosol and bottles. Eyeris technology, thanks to its advanced printing and imaging processes, delivers high-resolution images over the entire surface of an aluminium packaging surface. This HD imagery spans 360 degrees around the can or bottle, offering great detail and colour accuracy.
Albéa
Albéa showcased its new printing technology NovaPrint and Prime Print for tube decoration. NovaPrint consists of a PE film welded onto the extruded tube, which offers photographic-quality resolution, high-quality images and 360° printing, with no side welding. Prime Print solution enables direct printing on the cylindrical extruded tube, with photo-realistic results, high resolution, delicate details, smooth gradients and soft fading.
Minelli
The Minelli Group’s expertise in wood processing plays a pivotal role in mPackting’s offerings. The group’s knowledge, combined with a wide selection of wood species and finishing options, enables the creation of closures and containers tailored to unique needs of beauty brands. The introduction of mBlack, a material derived from biochar is recognised as a carbon sink, effectively absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere over the long term, is touted as a significant milestone for the company. When combined with a biodegradable biopolymer, mBlack emerges as a sustainable substitute for plastics, being biodegradable.
Seriplast
Known on the European market for being the first producer of the rigid polypropylene ampoule with a rigid base, Seriplast’s latest innovation is a thick-walled RPET bottle (30 ml) with a welded neck and glass-like cube bottle for cosmetics. Manufactured in PET, the 30ml cube bottle benefits from full transparency with a pleasant tactile feel in the hand which is further enhanced visually through the bottle’s heavy base. For luxury cosmetics, Seriplast’s cube bottle can be complemented by either a cosmetic dropper for liquid cosmetics or a finger pump for creamy treatments.
Avery Dennison
To inspire beauty brands and sustainable packaging designers, Avery Dennison has teamed up with Barcelona based Mucho, a global branding agency. During the show, AD highlighted an assortment of potential brands from the Zero Waste Beauty collection. Mucho produced a collection of seven unique brands that celebrate beauty both inside and out, with each one demonstrating how a label can have a big impact on consumers and a small impact on the planet.
Bormioli Luigi
Italian Bormioli Luigi is investing in what it says is a game-changing decoration technique. Its workshop in Parma recently added new equipment dedicated to sputtering, which is akin to vacuum metallisation. This surface treatment, in addition to the benefits of metallisation, offers complete control of metal application for glass that is 100 per cent recyclable. It offers the product the same shine and resistance to shock, scratches and juices. However, the sputtering technique consists of applying the décor in a vacuum using a physical process very different to metallisation. The chosen metal is transformed with gas and deposited on the surface of the bottle in the form of micro-fragments, making it possible to determine thickness for a minimal impact, and still guaranteeing recyclability.
This article was first published in the March-April issue of PKN Packaging News, page 60.
