Undertaken with the cosmetics and personal care sectors in mind, the initiative has seen Eastman collaborate with US-based cellulose acetate producer Rotuba Extruders, South Korean plastic container producer EJ Pack and Spanish fragrance specialist Eurofragrance to create a finished pack offering brand owners the chance to influence consumer purchase using smell alongside visual "cues".
The "Chocolatine" pack is a clear, injection-moulded jar incorporatring a chocolate/vanilla/orange fragrance in the body, and a lid that encapsulates and disperses an identical scent. Although there are no plans to market Chocolatine, the partners say the project shows it is possible to "render a complex fragrance and trap it durably in a plastic part produced from natural feedstock using encapsulation technology".
The jar is among the first standard containers produced by EJ Pack from Eastman's Glass Polymer copolyester resin via injection blowmoulding. Eastman says the combination of this process and Glass Polymer's attributes allows production of complex shapes not achievable via injection moulding alone.
The lid comprises an inner made from Glass Polymer and a scent-incorporating outer produced from Auracell, a speciality material developed by Rotuba from Eastman cellulosics.
