Aura, available in standard 15- or 30ml piston systems, offers a slim form and can be customized to Airless systems.

Airless for the Masses

Once restricted to the luxury market, increased competition has brought down costs and made airless technology an option for all.

By Christine Esposito
Contributing Editor

With cosmetic and skin care products increasing in sophistication and efficacy, and demand growing for more natural ingredients and fewer preservatives, the time is ripe for airless and airtight packaging.
   
While this is good news for packaging suppliers, it also benefits formulators. With opportunities for increased sales, packaging firms continue to refine their airless and airtight products. As a result, there are more options and units are better looking and more affordable than ever before.
   
“The applications for airless dispensing are truly vast,” says Gerard Perrin, vice president of global innovation with MeadWestvaco Calmar. “Any market that can benefit from preserving the integrity of their product and dispensing it through controlled and convenient dosage, is a candidate for airless dispensing,” he says.

Airless for the Masses

Airless packaging is being used across a wider range of categories, such as higher-priced mass facial skin care, a market experts predict will fare well even as the U.S. economy begins to slow.
   
“At one time, airless was for high-end markets, now it is accessible for the mass market,” says Virginie Lemeunier, global lotion product manager with Rexam, which developed patented airless packaging for Skin Genesis, a successful new anti-aging line from L’Oréal Paris.
   
Why are more mass firms going airless? It’s most likely a combination of more effective formulations and more affordable airless technology.
   
“Airless packaging is more economical today than in previous years,” says Perrin. “Over the past five years or so, most of the airless applications have graduated from using multi-component standard pumps, which create a well and introduce air and are expensive to customize, to airless systems that are designed efficiently and are more advanced in their functionality,” he adds.
   
Companies are finding different ways to make airless an option. For example, suppliers are using the same pump components across a wide range of styles, customizing only the external components of the packaging. “This allows the most expensive part of the package (the pump) to be used in high volumes, thus decreasing cost,” says Robb Zurek, director of marketing with Continental Packaging Solutions.
   
There’s another reason why airless technology is more affordable: increased competition among suppliers.
   
“We’re seeing airless packaging becoming much more affordable, particularly because the Asian manufacturing arena is driving costs down,” adds Zurek.
   
With new suppliers entering the airless market, quality has become a topic of discussion among established packaging firms.
   
“We find that the pumps manufactured in China are not as effective due to leaking issues and non-functioning pumps,” notes Vonda Simon, president of SeaCliff Packaging, which has been selling airless packaging made in Korea for more than eight years. Recent converts to SeaCliff’s Korean-sourced airless packages include a spa product line that switched over for eye, lip and serum products when its existing packaging came up short. “Their current supplier’s airless pumps were leaking and didn’t dispense so they were certainly happy with zero returns,” says Simon.
   
Lemeunier of Rexam also addresses quality issues. “Our consumers know that [airless] technology is precise,” says Lemeunier. “High end customers know that Asian technology is not there.”
   
While the debate over quality continues, more suppliers mean more products for marketers to consider.
    
“The increased availability and enhanced performance of airless packaging has led more and more consumer product groups to apply this dispensing system to their products. The rise in demand for increased capacity supports overall cost efficiency,” concludes Perrin.

More Options and Opportunities

Airless and airtight packaging is gaining acceptance across the beauty and personal care industry, thanks in part to new technology that supports more viscous formulations, new features such as screw caps that allow for more standard filling options and new sizes that make it more portable. Leading suppliers are expanding their expertise through R&D, strategic partnerships and acquisition.
   

Rexam developed airless packaging for Skin Genesis a new line from L’Oréal Paris.

Acquiring Dutch company Keltec Dispensing Technology in the last quarter of 2007 has expanded MeadWestvaco’s airless expertise with a rolling bellow system. Featuring a 100% thermal plastic component (which replaces four other parts) this non-venting airless dispenser works with high viscosity products and allows MeadWestvaco Calmar to bring the “simplicity and functionality of airless dispensing more broadly to the cosmetic and personal care industry, and support new and creative applications for airless dispensing,” says Perrin.
   
Suppliers say exploring new applications for airless technology is a savvy strategy for any personal care company that wants to make a big splash.  For example, Rexam contends its airless dispenser tubes, which are created in partnership with Tuboplast Hispania and Linhardt GmbH, would be perfect for sun care products and hand sanitizers, applications where airless products haven’t traditionally been used.
   
“This airless tube opens up product categories,” says Lemeunier. The tubes — which are being used by several companies, including Clarins and Victoria’s Secret Beauty — are delivered as an assembled component designed for high-speed modification-free filling on existing machines.
   
Companies should also consider how airless technology could breathe new life into a venerable line. 

“Airless dispensing applications can offer the desired look and feel of a new product, or refresh an existing one,” says Perrin, which can “support and strengthen brands in the competitive cosmetic and personal care marketplace.”

Airtight Developments

Beyond airless systems, new developments in airtight packaging mean cosmetic firms might want to rethink their options as well.
   
“Cosmetic companies may have stayed away from certain types of formulations because the available airtight packaging technology may have not been perfected,” says Steve Levine of HCP Packaging, which has supplied L’Oreal and P&G with airtight packaging for long-lasting lip products. For example, Levine believes compacts would be used to hold more volatile formulations, if not for “a scarcity of good airtight compacts available to the industry.”
    
HCP is out to change that, and has been developing airtight compacts typically for hot-pour applications. According to Levine, the company’s airtight eye shadow compact has led one major cosmetic marketer to further development of an innovative formulation.
   
Rexam has also made advancements in the airtight arena, launching Visible Lips, a new shade-evident version of its airtight stock lipstick package. With an airtight function, Visible Lips supports isododecane base formulas and offers a slim, elegant design, according to the company.

Form and Function

While the mechanizations of airless packaging are critical to success, packaging designers are paying closer attention to aesthetics. Like all packaging, airless and airtight products need to look and feel good and reinforce a brand’s image.
   
“We always look for new ways to decorate the packaging uniquely with heat transfer labels, hot stamping or silk screening options,” says Simon of SeaCliff Packaging.
   

Visible Lips is new from Rexam

The Aria airless system continues to be an ideal option for prestige brands, according to MeadWestvaco Calmar.  “From an aesthetic perspective, this pump is sleek and elegant, and can be customized in design, offering a luxurious look and feel,” notes Perrin.
   
Aura, from Airlessystems, is another option for high-end products. Conceived for anti-aging cosmetics, Aura offers airless packaging with a “slim form and noble materials,” according to the company. Available in standard 15ml or 30ml piston systems, Aura can be customized with colored or depolished actuators or barrels, galvanized collars, engraved caps and hot stamped or silk-screened outershells.
   
Airless technology—married with the right look and feel—can help a new brand make a great first impression in a growing market. 
   
“Many high-end brands are turning to airless packaging for an innovative twist in a burgeoning category,” says Zurek of Continental Packaging, which supplies airless packaging to Anthony Logistics for Men.  When the New York-based men’s grooming company needed a package for its new in-grown hair treatment lotion, Continental delivered a unit that would protect the “integrity of the product while feeling sturdy in a man’s hand,” notes Zurek.  The product—a gel-based complex of glycolic, salicylic and phytic acids with willowherb and lavender—has become a new favorite, having been named by Men’s Health magazine as a 2007 grooming product of the year.
   

Continental Packaging supplies airless packaging to Anthony Logistics for Men.

While applications for airless packaging are vast, there are areas that need further development. As green packaging becomes more prevalent, airless and airtight packaging need to follow suit. Many of the companies that Beauty Packaging spoke with are already reducing the number of components used and are exploring more environmentally sensitive materials.
   

What’s Next?

In addition, some say the industry would benefit overall if airless packaging became even more compatible with existing filling equipment. “Although there have been strides made in this regard, it is not widespread enough to constitute a true change in paradigm,” says Zurek. “Ultimately, if we can make filling easier, new markets are certain to use airless packaging.”