Making Beauty Packaging Better: how advancements in product and material innovation are shaping the marketplace

15-Apr-2020 - Last updated on 15-Apr-2020 at 13:37 GMT

photo via Aptar

Related tags Packaging CBD applicator circular economy

Innovation begets innovation. The beauty industry, even now, is a fast-moving industry. As cosmetics and personal care product ingredients and formulations become evermore sophisticated and nuanced so too do the materials, and designs, and dispensing solutions that house them.

Here, CosmeticsDesign.com looks at some of the latest and leading-edge launches in beauty packaging.

New droppers address cosmetics and personal care formulation trends

Virospack, a company based in Spain that specializes in droppers for the cosmetics and personal care industry, has launched several new designs to meet the needs of the changing beauty industry. New designs from Virospack (which are available here in the States from SGB Packaging Group, Inc.) include droppers with cooling metal tips for a massage-like application experience, a child resistant dropper cap mechanism for use with CBD products, and a dropper cap that accommodates biphase product formulations.

The new DuoMix Turn & Shake dropper allows for powder/liquid or liquid/liquid formulations with a 3ml reservoir cap and bottles in either 10, 15, or 20ml volumes. The Dropper for CBD features a certified child-resistant press-and-turn cap design that Virospack describes at “the safest dropper on the market.” And the 2-in-1 Cooling Dropper features a metal dropper tip that doubles as a tiny massage application tool. This novel dispenser won The Best Packaging Innovation award at the 2020 PCD-ADF show in Paris.

ISCC certification takes sustainable packaging to the next level

Beauty packaging that is green, clean, or otherwise sustainable remains somewhat elusive, despite all the advances in recycling, refilling, and novel material innovation. But the concept of circularity (a system that eliminates waste entirely and instead continually reuses materials and resources) promises to solve that conundrum.

The latest launch from Aptar is the first plastic beauty packaging to earn ISCC certification. And its no surprise that the first product to be filled and sold in the new packaging is from the Unilever brand REN, a pioneer in sustainable personal care packaging.

The new packaging leverages a “revolutionary type of recycled plastic resin supplied by SABIC, a global leader in the production and distribution of polymers and thermoplastic materials,” according to an Aptar news item posted online this past Sunday.

“SABIC has perfected the difficult task of converting post-consumer, low-grade plastic waste otherwise destined for incineration or landfill, into virgin plastic, which has been audited and approved by the ISCC according to a mass balance approach,” explains the item.

The mass balance approach to ISCC certification recognizes the fact that most recycling infrastructure doesn’t allow for materials to be thoughtfully sorted. As the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification (ISCC) site explains it, “Since chemically recycled or bio-based feedstocks are typically blended in the manufacturing complex, physical segregation of recycled content is often practically and economically infeasible. The mass balance approach makes it possible to track the amount and sustainability characteristics of circular and/or bio-based content in the value chain and attribute it based on verifiable bookkeeping.”

---

Deanna Utroske is a leading voice in the cosmetics and personal care industry as well as in the indie beauty movement. As Editor of CosmeticsDesign.com, she writes daily news about the business of beauty in the Americas region and regularly produces video interviews with cosmetics, fragrance, personal care, and packaging experts as well as with indie brand founders.