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The best bottles, tubes, tubs and dispensers look great, work right and improve a product’s environmental profile, say industry experts.
By: TOM BRANNA
June 2, 2014
What garners the most attention, captures the most awards and wins over consumers these days? Is it the package replete with bangles and beads that inspires consumers to aspire? Or maybe it’s one of those fully functional formats that get the job done right the first time and every time? Or perhaps, it’s a sustainable package that promises to work like magic and then, literally, disappear? Successful packaging today means more than product protection. Consumers have come to expect much, much more from less and less packaging. After all, according to L’Oréal’s estimate, beauty and personal care packaging alone, accounts for a third of landfill content. In response, marketers are delivering more, while putting less into waste streams—even as demand for packaging grows in emerging markets. The global demand for personal care packaging is expected to reach nearly $25.8 billion according to a study by Transparency Market Research, which predicts increasing demand for personal care products in BRIC and other emerging markets provide growth opportunities in the near future. Unilever Personal Care president Dave Lewis couldn’t agree more; 60% of his business is in emerging markets. At last month’s WWD Beauty CEO Summit he explained that the ambition is to continue to build a more premium portfolio of personal care brands, while still growing the business at the bottom of the pyramid: “We built our success by making our products accessible to billions of people around the world. But the opportunity to think up through the pyramid is clear, the case to build a more premium portfolio compelling,” he said. “We are therefore making beauty as much a part of our personal care business as the need for cleanliness and the bars of soap that helped build the foundation of our business.” Whether at the top of the pyramid or the bottom, all gains will be tempered, however, by new regulations. In this environment, flexible packaging is expected to be the fastest growing segment over the forecast period, because it offers lightweight, low-cost solutions, along with high durability and aesthetic appeal, according to the study. However, Unilever relies on HDPE for its new Vaseline Intensive Care range of lotions, which contain a blend of humectants and micro-droplets of Vaseline Jelly to deeply moisturize dry skin. The formula may be new, but the packaging maintains a similar pack and cap color, to make it easy for loyal customers to find the line on crowded store shelves. “We have taken steps to modernize the front label to reflect our new positioning,” explained Dawn Hedgepeth, Unilever US skin director. “Additionally, we’ve moved to make the product claims on pack clearer, including a visual of the healing micro-droplets of Vaseline Jelly to help customers understand the formula innovation.” Despite the new look and new formulas, the Vaseline Intensive Care range still targets the same consumer—a woman who believes that taking care of herself, especially her skin, is important, said Hedgepeth. “She is willing to put in the effort needed to get real results. She isn’t looking for superficial lotions, quick fixes, or products making exaggerated promises. She wants substantive skin care that delivers real results.” Glass Acts Plastic options may be okay for some personal care applications, but when it comes to high-end CFT packaging, glass remains at the top of the heap. Stroll through any Sephora these days and you’ll find premium rollerball formats for best-selling fragrances from Marc Jacobs, Chloé, Jimmy Choo and many others. “Rollerballs address the consumer demand for convenience,” explained Virginia Lee, an analyst at Euromonitor International. “The cost on a per ounce basis is ridiculously high, but women have a fragrance wardrobe and usually don’t wear the same fragrance every day.” In the case of fragrance, it may make sense to purchase small quantities. After all, regardless of the package, the juice starts to lose its luster after a couple of years in the boudoir. Small, glass bottles have found their way into skin care packaging too. Brands such as Darphin, Josie Maran and Fresh have rolled out formulas that contain oils such as argan, passion fruit, marula and maracuja, which are dispensed with droppers from small glass bottles. These containers showcase the beauty of the oil and ensure the right amount of oil is dispensed. “In the past, it was considered taboo to apply oil to the face,” recalled Lee. “But facial oils can enhance even oily skin.” The Spray’s the Thing Just in time for summer is new Vaseline Spray & Go Aloe Fresh, a convenient 360° continuous spray lotion for post-sun use and moisturization. It’s just one example of how marketers are finding new uses for aerosol products. A couple of years ago, continuous sprays revolutionized the sun care category, and now they’re finding their way into other personal care segments. The success of continuous sprays helped North American aerosol product production rose 1.8% in 2013 to an all-time high, with an estimated 4.453 billion units filled, according to the Consumer Specialty Products Association’s (CSPA) Aerosol Pressurized Products Survey. The findings are an annual indicator of the business strength of the aerosol products industry. For the first time, CSPA reported total bag-on-valve (BOV) products as a separate category. An estimated 297 million BOV components were shipped to fillers in the US and Puerto Rico in 2013. This is 8.4% of the total 3.54 billion valves shipped to those fillers. Let’s Get Small Good things come in small packages—especially when they’re from Birchbox or one of the other beauty subscription services that have soared in popularity in recent years. Their success has been a boon to sample-size packaging suppliers. “There’s been an explosion in mini sample-sized packaging, due to the success of Birchbox, Glossy Box and Julep,” observed Lee. “Sampling has always been big in US prestige channels, but with thousands of men and women are now receiving packages every month, it has created a huge demand for sample size packaging.” That demand is only going to grow as more startups invade the mail order space with even more product offerings, observed Tim Barrett of Euromonitor International, who noted that Dollar Shave Club has expanded its portfolio to include wipes. “Shipping is expensive, so once they get a customer it makes sense to expand the product offering,” he explained. Once they’re hooked, Birchbox and other subscription service customers can buy full-size items from hundreds of brands on the service’s website. Company officials say more than half of Birchbox subscribers ultimately buy full-size products off the site. That buying pattern surprised even the Birchbox founders, Katia Beauchamp and Haley Barna, but then, consumer habits having been stumping consumer product executives for decades. Nowhere is the more evident than in the area of environmentalism, where consumers say one thing…and do something completely different. Just like the weather, consumers talk about going green, but nobody does anything about it! “Look at the success of Keurig,” offered Lee. “Individual servings of coffee aren’t environmentally friendly, but consumers want convenience.” That quest for convenience may ultimately convince more multinationals to jump into the subscription service space and, if Gillette starts shipping razors to your average Joe in New Jersey, you can bet that will impact Dollar Shave Club and others. Green…and Gray Consumers may be fickle when it comes to making green purchasing decisions, but that hasn’t stopped multinationals from rolling out post-consumer recyclable packaging and innovative programs to go with it. Unilever, for example, is committed to reducing plastic in its personal care packaging. It’s done just that by utilizing the MuCell Technology for Extrusion Blow Molding, which it developed in collaboration with two of its packaging suppliers ALPLA and MuCell Extrusion. Injecting gas to create gas bubbles in the middle layer of the bottle wall reduces the density of the bottle and the amount of plastic required. Unilever is deploying the technology first in Europe across the Dove Body Wash range, before rolling the technology out into other regions and brands. With up to 33 million Dove Body Wash bottles sold across Europe in 2013, the new technology stands to save up to 275 tons of plastic a year; whereas a full roll-out across every Unilever product and packaging format could save up to 27,000 tons of plastic and contribute significantly to the target set out in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan to halve waste footprint by 2020. But Unilever isn’t keeping a good thing all for itself. The company will waive specific exclusivity rights by January 2015 so that other manufacturers can start to use the technology across their brands and products. “We’re always on the search for new technologies that can help us achieve our ambition to build a more sustainable business and halve our environmental footprint, and working with our two partners, we’ve created a unique technology that will transform our portfolio,” said Paul Howells, VP-R&D packaging in a statement. “But there’s only so much that Unilever can achieve on our own; and by opening up access to other manufacturers we will really start to see an impact. We very much hope that our peers in the industry will take advantage of this technology too and apply it to their products.” L’Oréal’s corporate sustainability commitment, Sharing Beauty with All, is focused on innovating, producing, living and developing sustainably. One part of that program is Garnier’s Personal Care and Beauty Brigade. The brand formed a partnership with TerraCycle, a specialist in making consumer products from post-consumer materials. Last year, Garnier and TerraCycle transformed over 1,500 pounds of recycled personal care waste into a one-of-a-kind Garnier Green Garden in New York City. This year, the program is going national in an effort to create gardens for deserving communities. Each Garnier Green Garden will be made from 100% completely recycled materials. According to Lauren Taylor, US director of public relations for TerraCycle, the unique challenge that Garnier’s program presented was developing a solution for the entire personal care and beauty product category’s waste stream, not just waste from Garnier-branded products. TerraCycle had to create a recycling process that was not only robust enough to handle all sorts of personal care and beauty product residue, but also versatile enough to accept the packaging from hundreds of different products—all while keeping it economically feasible for TerraCycle and Garnier. “Luckily, the ‘easy’ to recycle components of the program are indeed the most common,” she said. About 70% of the products collected in this waste stream are either #1 (PET) or #2 (PE, HDPE) plastic. This category contains primarily the personal care portion of the program—bottles and jars for shampoos, conditioners, lotions, body washes, and miscellaneous hair and skin products. It’s the beauty portion of the program that makes the program more difficult. This category contains either #5 (PP) plastics, or “other,” which includes cardboard/paper, #6 or #7 plastics, cosmetic residue, cosmetic brushes and applicators, and other miscellaneous cosmetic products. This portion is most difficult because it requires additional separation, cleaning and processing steps in the recycling process, which is why this category is not accepted by municipal recycling systems, according to Taylor. The Green Garden project isn’t Garnier’s sole answer to reducing packaging waste. It uses 30-50% PCR PET in all of its bottles. Multinationals aren’t the only companies making big environmental gains in the packaging realm. Pravana’s Nevo brand, which was recently expanded with new styling products, is packaged in 100% biodegradable bottles and jars. Nevo (New Evolution) formulas are 100%vegan and available only in salons. Unlike plastic bottles that take an estimated 500 to 1,000 years to break down and which do not ever really biodegrade (they only break down to smaller pieces), the plastic bottles in the Nevo line contain a special ingredient that attracts bacteria to eat and fully digest the bottles. This process starts approximately 250 days after the bottle is introduced into the landfill. Depending on the type of landfill and the associated bacteria types and levels, the total biodegrading process takes from 2-8 years. Once complete, there is no residual plastic. During the process, the digestion of the bottles produces methane gas, which can be captured at the landfill and converted to electrical energy. Since it takes years for products to breakdown in landfills, with today’s aging consumer base, it’s a safe bet that a lot people won’t be around to benefit from all that biodegradability. With that in mind, it’s key for marketers and their suppliers to think about how older consumers, as well as the disabled and able-bodied, interact with their products and packages, according to Barrett. At last month’s CSPA Midyear meeting (see p. 82 in this issue) he offered suggestions on designing home care products for aging populations around the world. He defined Universal Design as product design based on the core value of inherent and equal accessibility for the elderly, disabled and able-bodied alike. He noted that Japan has the oldest population in the world, with Germany at No. 2 and the US and China not far behind. But even as consumers grow older, they want things done faster and easier. These demands led to the creation of unit dose packs, concentrated liquids and even auto-stop caps such as Tesco’s Flash all-purpose cleaner. Age-conscious manufacturers are also putting more detailed pictures on product labels and making fill lines clearly visible so that older consumers know when they are running out of product. For arthritis sufferers, SC Johnson added electric trigger sprays to Scrubbing Bubbles and Raid brands, while Guangzhou Liby launched new packaging for its Venwin cleaner, whereby the inner spray nozzle is pointed upward at a 45º angle rather than straight. In the US, Clorox added a dispensing tube that tracks along the bottle wall so that cash-strapped consumers can get every drop of liquid from their cleaner. “Innovation must save consumers money, or not cost them any more,” he warned. Beyond the packaging, formulas and formats are changing too, to meet the special requirements of older and disabled consumers. Formulas like Kaboom Foam-Tastic change color to show that they’re working, while devices like P&G’s Swiffer Vac provide greater reach and clean more surfaces. And, just as in personal care, marketers are rolling out greener packages that use less plastic or are available with refill packages. For example, in China, SC Johnson rolled out a Mr. Muscle bottle that is 9% lighter than the traditional package, which will save more than 900,000 pounds of resin annually. With retail channels in flux, sustainability on the rise and a population getting older, marketers must grapple with a range of issues that impact their packaging decisions.
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