In the eye of the beholder

Beauty products and their packaging go hand in hand. Frequently, the pack is the product – good to look at and touch, smart on shelf and dressing table and easy to dispense in the shower. But what if we could take that a stage further?

Last month's entries to the 2020 Vision Get Smart Design Challenge (part of the Packaging Innovation Show 2005) may have appeared far-fetched. They certainly took "the pack is the product" philosophy to its limits but were they so wildly off the mark?

Designed for the growing population of women of 50 plus, DCA Design's Prepare portable compact, a skincare and diagnostic product based on nanotechnology, assesses the condition of the skin through a skin analyser magnifier and displays the information via an inbuilt camera. This allows information to be tailored so that the user can apply applicable toner, moisturiser and skincare treatments, all of which are contained in the compact.

The Brewery design house came up with SunPaK – "a sunlight enhanced, skincare product." The concept uses "friendly" bacteria and just like growing vegetables consumers will be able to nurture their own products by opening the pack and letting natural sunlight develop the active bacteria until the product is ready to use. The metallised reflective surfaces capture available light and focus it onto the container at the centre of the pack.

Crazy? But then who would have thought 15 years ago just how image conscious we would be today? That women of all ages would be using and buying skin products only dreamt of by Hollywood stars and that one of the fastest growing sectors would be cosmetics and toiletries for men?

Rexam reports that we all demand more than basic toiletries; we want cosmetics to make us feel, as well as look, good. Historically, women have led the purchasing of beauty products, but men are increasingly interested in their own health and beauty regimes.

"Dynamic increases in sales of men's grooming products demonstrate the trend towards men buying more personal care products. While still not a large market in relative volume terms, men's skin care has shown a double-digit growth in Europe and the US in recent years."

In Europe, beauty packaging is growing at around 2% a year, with some countries such as Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland achieving growth rates closer to 5%. Rexam reveals that some developing countries are registering even higher growth, with the Ukraine at over 20%.

Packaging is often the major push for an impulse purchase so look, touch and feel are vital. Materials and graphics take on an important role.

"Men's fragrance, for example, has developed distinctive packaging that attempts to convey ideas of modernity and strength, giving it an identity that is distinct from women's packaging," reports Rexam.

Rigid plastics, mainly rigid HDPE bottles and squeezable plastics tubes, dominate beauty packaging worldwide, although the importance of materials varies between regions and countries. For example, rigid plastics account for just over 40% of all packages found in Eastern Europe, whereas in the US the figure rises to around 65%.

Rexam, a leading supplier of spray components to the ever-expanding market of men's brands, is supplying both fragrance and personal care spray assemblies for the John Varvatos line from Zirh International. It boasts 12 men's products equipped with Rexam SLPP, SP34 and LX pumps with the range extending from after shave to face revitalising gel.

In Europe Clarins' Paris uses the company's airless lotion pumps for its men's brands, Clarins Men Undereye Serum and Total Wrinkle Control Cream. The latter's 50ml size and the former's 30ml pack features Rexam's Soprano actuators and collars that are said to be particularly attractive to the male market.

"The Soprano feels and looks substantial with its ergonomic actuator and wide collar," says Eric Desmaris, global marketing manager for Rexam Dispensing Systems. "Men prefer their treatment and fragrance products to have a rugged, yet comfortable, feel with a masculine colour scheme. Tactility and quick, smooth operation are key when producing for male brands."

Manufacturers have responded to the damage shaving can cause by developing emulsions specifically designed for men containing higher percentages of active ingredients when compared to women's skin products. Male formulations are more fragile and complex and Titan, Airlessystems' new piston pack, prevents air from entering and protects formulations from oxidation and sunlight.

The Evolution pump, which is used with the Titan piston package – available in 30, 50 and 75ml sizes – dispenses highly viscous emulsions of up to 60,000cps and is said to be both "masculine and ergonomic" and it is also claimed to be compatible with high speed machines.

The pump, PP collar and cap are delivered assembled, as are the PP body, PE piston and PP base. Quality control is claimed to assure 100% air-tightness. Once the pack is filled the two sections are snapped together.

As far as plastics for perfume packaging is concerned, there has been a move towards heavier, more transparent and glossy materials in order to communicate a luxury image. The new Christian Dior Fragrance for Men confirms this trend. Manufactured by Ileos group company Axilone the prismatic cap is moulded with Surlyn resin, while the inner is PE. The cap catches the light and plays up the colour of the fragrance merged with a deep black masculine inner.

Lynx, a mass brand in the male toiletries sector, benefited from some special attention from the design team at Plastique. Christmas and Father's Day are special times for users of the brand and when the gift has the added bonus of a useful device, a radio or boxer shorts for example, then the contents need to be displayed in an effective way.

Clear visibility was achieved with a thermoformed box that clipped together with an inner forming holding all of the contents. A wraparound printed card was used on the inside of the pack, which covered the back and a small proportion of the front providing branding and contents information. The whole pack clipped together for a robust and novel gift set.

Plastique has now concentrated its manufacturing in Nottingham, where it recently gained the BRC/IOP standard, while at the same time investing in a new HQ in Tunbridge Wells, Kent which houses design and development and sales and administration. Sales director Perry Rigler says "one innovation to look out for shortly is the development of pre-printed plastics material that can then be formed

New valve development

The relaunch of Sara Lee's Radox Shower range has seen the introduction of a new valve development – a Crown Zeller asymmetric dispensing closure. Over the past 10 years the convenience of the ZelValve non-drip dispensing system has been an integral part of the Radox marketing strategy.

In order to boost production speeds to meet demand for valve closures, Crown has developed a new silicone valve sub-assembly, enabling it to replace the three-line manufacturing and assembly process used for the previous Radox closure design with one high-speed production line. Sara Lee is the first to use the new sub-assembly, which can be incorporated into any valve closure design.

Convenience is certainly to the fore with PopUp a new closure system for bottles designed by Plastohm. The press-action opening is "easy and effortless and simplifies consumers' daily care", says the company. It is claimed to be the first cap for the toiletries market that will open with a press of the thumb.

Launched last month by Wilden at Cosmeeting, Paris, were an all-in-one dispenser system, the Wilden Combi, and a special Prestige airless dispenser for sensitive ingredients. Combi was developed for the combination and mixing of product components in the haircare sector.

The upper and the lower bottle of the two-part dispenser can contain 120ml and 40ml respectively and Franz Utz, Business Unit manager of Wilden BeautyPack says: "We opted for PE for the upper and PET for the lower bottle as this combination is best suited to hair colourants."

The Prestige, with AirLEssMOTION bag-in-bottle system Lemotion from Gaplast, is designed for dispensing sensitive and valuable products. "The basic principle of our patented airless system is convenience in handling," explains Utz. "The Soft-Touch header can be customised for each product and feels warm and soft when held. It ensures easy, clean and individually controllable dispensing and prevents slipping while dosing."

In order to protect sensitive ingredients, the new dispenser is equipped with a multilayer container. The bottle contains a coextruded plastic bag (bag-in-bottle) which in combination with special headers is best tailored to individual requirements of premium cosmetics. By fixing the bag both at the bottle's neck and bottom seam, a controlled, axial folding of the inner bag gives a high output quantity of the contents.

The design and non-metal construction of Rieke Packaging Systems' recently-launched non-aerosol foamer were key reasons for the dispenser's selection by Californian-based skin and suncare manufacturer St Tropez for the company's All Body Self-Tanning Mousse.

The finger-tip version of the foamer, which draws product from the container and mixes it with air at the point of dispense to enable to foam without the use of traditional aerosol technology, is being used in conjunction with 150ml and 250ml white HDPE bottles to deliver an 0.8ml dose.