From the concept phase to R&D, production to quality control and logistics, Baralan has been recognized as a leading player in glass and plastic primary packaging for the cosmetics industry for nearly 60 years. The company creates, manufactures and customizes premium glass and plastic containers with related accessories for skincare, makeup and fragrance products. With commercial headquarters in Italy, the company has operations in more than 50 countries worldwide, with U.S. branches in New York, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale, and a Chinese branch in Shanghai.
Here, Maurizio Ficcadenti, global R&D manager at Baralan, tells Beauty Packaging about the company’s customer-first approach and standout reputation for research and development—and provides details on their latest sustainability tenets and packaging solutions.
Jamie Matusow: Please tell us about Baralan’s history in the cosmetics industry.
Maurizio Ficcadenti: Since 1962, Baralan Group has been recognized as a key player in primary packaging for the cosmetics industry. The company creates, manufactures and customizes premium glass and plastic containers with related accessories for skincare, makeup and fragrance products. With operations in more than 50 countries worldwide, Baralan has its commercial headquarters in Italy, with U.S. branches in New York, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale, and a Chinese branch in Shanghai. For almost 60 years, Baralan has been synonymous with quality and 360° customer service: both in the concept phase up to research and development and in production up to quality control and logistics. Baralan creates, designs, engineers, manufactures and customizes glass and plastic containers with related accessories, believing in the value of long-term partnerships with customers and suppliers. A daily challenge is to present a wide range of high-quality products largely available in stock, and in various locations that meet the increasingly personalized requests of the cosmetic industry, with the aim of being recognized as a point of reference in Primary Packaging for cosmetics.
The Group’s motto is ‘Cosmetic Packaging Solutions’: the intrinsic concept of solution conveys to the market how Baralan supports its customers with the development of a concept and the creation of a product, which is possible thanks to the organization, the international structure and a strong integration of the value chain. Providing a product of quality means above all, listening to the market and its requests, as well as guaranteeing a nearby local presence that ensures precision and efficiency. For this reason, Baralan Group has chosen to position itself in the most interesting markets, which are also a point of reference in the world, and over the years, it has strengthened its organizational structure with commercial, production and decoration companies worldwide.
JM: How does Baralan excel in the market with their R&D capabilities?
MF: Baralan’s Research and Development department is the beating heart of the company, which enables the Group to look toward the future with dynamism, flexibility and credibility, aiming at innovation. New ideas, styles and processes are created, combining Baralan’s experience with the most modern technologies. However, the core of each project is always the customer with its specific needs according to market priorities and objectives. The continuous interaction with customers, with active listening, allows Baralan to develop the best packaging solution suitable for each customer’s request.
Baralan’s added value is, in fact, the careful control on each phase of the value chain, thanks to an internal department specialized in Research and Development, which, on the one hand, carries out constant research to define innovative concepts; and on the other, works to achieve the result of a new product bringing the initial idea to reality. The final result is greater involvement with the client in the development of packaging that will be tailor-made and will stand out for its unique design in the market, being able to combine aesthetics and functionality, broadening the opportunity to enhance the identity of the brand.
JM: What is Baralan focused on, moving ahead?
MF: For Baralan, innovation is the driver, the change, the strategic lever that guides the evolution and continuous improvement of the company’s processes and the product itself. Baralan has always pursued innovation, understanding and anticipating needs and requirements in order to create a solid relationship and mutual listening with its customers, as well as offering creative and effective solutions.
Innovation for us is a unique combination of experience, tradition and progress. It is the ability to offer to each customer the best possible solution through a careful study of design, through the proposal of different formats to meet the needs of the market and subsequently through the customization of the product with various effects and decorations. Innovating means going beyond the ordinary, thinking outside the box and proposing original packaging, studied in every detail, fascinating to look at, while never forgetting about functionality, ergonomics and ease of use.
JM: Is Sustainability an important tenet at Baralan? In which ways? CSR? Packaging?
MF:The packaging of a product plays a fundamental role, especially in the cosmetic world, not only for functional, but also for aesthetic and value reasons. Packaging must comply with mandatory regulations and quality standards and at the same time, guarantee practicality in protecting the formula and functionality of the components. When it comes to sustainability, the concreteness lies in proposing products made with sustainable materials which respect all the characteristics just mentioned, and which are also accepted by the market as valid substitutes or alternatives. Thus, for Baralan, sustainability and sustainable development are concepts linked to an idea of circular economy that takes into account on one side CSR as a company overall, and on the other the role of its products with a specific attention to quality, satisfying the needs between design and functionality, safeguarding and ensuring better conditions for products’ lifecycle. Sustainability is one of the key elements of Baralan’s strategy, which is committed daily to respond to the growing desire of consumers to find products that meet their expectations with particular ethical and environmental needs and that reflect their values.
Therefore, in creating a new product, it is important for Baralan to guarantee functionality and aesthetics and, at the same time, to innovate by offering increasingly “green” solutions. For this reason, essential aspects are the combination between the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) and the packaging design. The whole development process is evaluated in terms of production, end-life and disposal of the product, optimizing the use of the components and materials for its realization, reusing materials derived from industrial waste and production processes, and favoring products’ recycling.
The core business of Baralan has always been glass, universally considered to be eco-friendly and infinitely recycled. At the same time, Baralan’s commitment is constantly aimed at researching, studying and selecting sustainable materials, embracing the advantages of the use of resources with a lower environmental impact that respect the conditions of recyclability and/or biodegradability when possible. Moreover, in recent years, Baralan has also switched toward the selection of biopolymers that derive from renewable sources and natural materials, not linked to the food chain, to be used for the production of alternative packaging to plastic, reducing the ecological impact and contributing consequently to create a less polluted ecosystem.
As a company, Baralan’s choices have always been oriented towards eco-sustainability and constant research for the development of products with a lower environmental impact. Baralan’s business decisions are therefore made with full awareness and respect for social responsibility, not only in the research and production of qualitative, innovative and eco-sustainable packaging, but also and above all, in the daily working life. This sensitivity, in fact, goes beyond the simple development of sustainable products and involves all the aspects of the company, which obtained the ISO 9001 certification of its Quality Management System at the end of 2020. This is also reflected through the investment in a paperless direction and digitalization. Sustainable practices also include the constant activity of prevention and reduction of waste, the control of emissions by production plants and the focus on products’ stock in all central warehouses to optimize transportation and reduce the logistical environmental impact.
JM: Please describe a recent packaging innovation. What about Maria Jars that were featured in a recent Videobite for Beauty Packaging?
MF: Yes, we just launched our Maria Jars line, a new line composed of three glass jars in different capacities: the Maria Jar in 50-, 75- and 100 ml. Developed primarily for ease of use with skincare products, all jar sizes in the new series feature a wide neck. The new line expands Baralan’s standard range of products, increasing the maximum jar diameter offered with a special GPI 70 thread.
The Maria Jar line is a completely new design for Baralan. Most notably, the jars’ large neck diameter makes it considerably easier for consumers to retrieve product from inside the container and maximize its use. Additionally, all size jars of the series are paired with the same accessories. To have only one pairing of accessories to various sized jars creates benefits not only in terms of supply and cost of components, but also in terms of purchasing, logistics and customization.
As another innovation of this series, the new Malang 70 cap was designed in one unique size that fits all three jars, along with the new protection disc and spatula. Moreover, the liner is assembled with no use of glue. The cap features a “double entry” thread that guarantees a consistent and more reliable closure around the circumference of the neck, ensuring integrity of the filled product with no product loss.
Aligning with Baralan’s focus on sustainability and environmentally-friendly packaging solutions, the glass jars and the cap are made with recyclable materials—glass for the Maria Jars and PP or PETG for the Malang cap—ensuring a fully recyclable lifecycle of the products. Furthermore, both the jars and the cap are each made with a portion of post-industrial recycled (PIR) materials, a means of minimizing waste by keeping as much recycled components in the production stream as possible. All Maria Jars can be customized with accessories and with various decoration techniques that use only compliant inks and water-based paints, further reducing environmental impact.
JM: What market trends led to the development of the Maria Jars?
MF: The green footprint, the common thread of most of Baralan's new products, requires particular attention to the development of products through the 3Rs and therefore products’ life cycle: from the choice of reducing the use of components and materials for their realization to the possibility to reuse the materials deriving from industrial waste and from production processes, to the ease of recycling the product. A concrete commitment, which is also visible from the characteristics of the Maria Jar line. Both the jars and the caps are made with fully recyclable materials and have already been designed for proper disposal at the end of their lifecycle. For example, for the jars, we used glass, a material that can be recycled infinitely. In addition, both the jars and the caps are made in combination with post-industrial recycled material (PIR) to minimize waste. The use of glass, which has always been part of our history, together with other recyclable materials allows us to offer an alternative and sustainable solution that integrates environmental criteria into the product industrialization process.
Furthermore, we have intentionally developed a single cap for all three versions of the Maria Jars and made a single production mold, thus avoiding energy waste within the production chain and the storage of large quantities of caps. A concrete example of reduction and a more sustainable approach.
Here, Maurizio Ficcadenti, global R&D manager at Baralan, tells Beauty Packaging about the company’s customer-first approach and standout reputation for research and development—and provides details on their latest sustainability tenets and packaging solutions.
Jamie Matusow: Please tell us about Baralan’s history in the cosmetics industry.
Maurizio Ficcadenti: Since 1962, Baralan Group has been recognized as a key player in primary packaging for the cosmetics industry. The company creates, manufactures and customizes premium glass and plastic containers with related accessories for skincare, makeup and fragrance products. With operations in more than 50 countries worldwide, Baralan has its commercial headquarters in Italy, with U.S. branches in New York, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale, and a Chinese branch in Shanghai. For almost 60 years, Baralan has been synonymous with quality and 360° customer service: both in the concept phase up to research and development and in production up to quality control and logistics. Baralan creates, designs, engineers, manufactures and customizes glass and plastic containers with related accessories, believing in the value of long-term partnerships with customers and suppliers. A daily challenge is to present a wide range of high-quality products largely available in stock, and in various locations that meet the increasingly personalized requests of the cosmetic industry, with the aim of being recognized as a point of reference in Primary Packaging for cosmetics.
The Group’s motto is ‘Cosmetic Packaging Solutions’: the intrinsic concept of solution conveys to the market how Baralan supports its customers with the development of a concept and the creation of a product, which is possible thanks to the organization, the international structure and a strong integration of the value chain. Providing a product of quality means above all, listening to the market and its requests, as well as guaranteeing a nearby local presence that ensures precision and efficiency. For this reason, Baralan Group has chosen to position itself in the most interesting markets, which are also a point of reference in the world, and over the years, it has strengthened its organizational structure with commercial, production and decoration companies worldwide.
JM: How does Baralan excel in the market with their R&D capabilities?
MF: Baralan’s Research and Development department is the beating heart of the company, which enables the Group to look toward the future with dynamism, flexibility and credibility, aiming at innovation. New ideas, styles and processes are created, combining Baralan’s experience with the most modern technologies. However, the core of each project is always the customer with its specific needs according to market priorities and objectives. The continuous interaction with customers, with active listening, allows Baralan to develop the best packaging solution suitable for each customer’s request.
Baralan’s added value is, in fact, the careful control on each phase of the value chain, thanks to an internal department specialized in Research and Development, which, on the one hand, carries out constant research to define innovative concepts; and on the other, works to achieve the result of a new product bringing the initial idea to reality. The final result is greater involvement with the client in the development of packaging that will be tailor-made and will stand out for its unique design in the market, being able to combine aesthetics and functionality, broadening the opportunity to enhance the identity of the brand.
JM: What is Baralan focused on, moving ahead?
MF: For Baralan, innovation is the driver, the change, the strategic lever that guides the evolution and continuous improvement of the company’s processes and the product itself. Baralan has always pursued innovation, understanding and anticipating needs and requirements in order to create a solid relationship and mutual listening with its customers, as well as offering creative and effective solutions.
Innovation for us is a unique combination of experience, tradition and progress. It is the ability to offer to each customer the best possible solution through a careful study of design, through the proposal of different formats to meet the needs of the market and subsequently through the customization of the product with various effects and decorations. Innovating means going beyond the ordinary, thinking outside the box and proposing original packaging, studied in every detail, fascinating to look at, while never forgetting about functionality, ergonomics and ease of use.
JM: Is Sustainability an important tenet at Baralan? In which ways? CSR? Packaging?
MF:The packaging of a product plays a fundamental role, especially in the cosmetic world, not only for functional, but also for aesthetic and value reasons. Packaging must comply with mandatory regulations and quality standards and at the same time, guarantee practicality in protecting the formula and functionality of the components. When it comes to sustainability, the concreteness lies in proposing products made with sustainable materials which respect all the characteristics just mentioned, and which are also accepted by the market as valid substitutes or alternatives. Thus, for Baralan, sustainability and sustainable development are concepts linked to an idea of circular economy that takes into account on one side CSR as a company overall, and on the other the role of its products with a specific attention to quality, satisfying the needs between design and functionality, safeguarding and ensuring better conditions for products’ lifecycle. Sustainability is one of the key elements of Baralan’s strategy, which is committed daily to respond to the growing desire of consumers to find products that meet their expectations with particular ethical and environmental needs and that reflect their values.
Therefore, in creating a new product, it is important for Baralan to guarantee functionality and aesthetics and, at the same time, to innovate by offering increasingly “green” solutions. For this reason, essential aspects are the combination between the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) and the packaging design. The whole development process is evaluated in terms of production, end-life and disposal of the product, optimizing the use of the components and materials for its realization, reusing materials derived from industrial waste and production processes, and favoring products’ recycling.
The core business of Baralan has always been glass, universally considered to be eco-friendly and infinitely recycled. At the same time, Baralan’s commitment is constantly aimed at researching, studying and selecting sustainable materials, embracing the advantages of the use of resources with a lower environmental impact that respect the conditions of recyclability and/or biodegradability when possible. Moreover, in recent years, Baralan has also switched toward the selection of biopolymers that derive from renewable sources and natural materials, not linked to the food chain, to be used for the production of alternative packaging to plastic, reducing the ecological impact and contributing consequently to create a less polluted ecosystem.
As a company, Baralan’s choices have always been oriented towards eco-sustainability and constant research for the development of products with a lower environmental impact. Baralan’s business decisions are therefore made with full awareness and respect for social responsibility, not only in the research and production of qualitative, innovative and eco-sustainable packaging, but also and above all, in the daily working life. This sensitivity, in fact, goes beyond the simple development of sustainable products and involves all the aspects of the company, which obtained the ISO 9001 certification of its Quality Management System at the end of 2020. This is also reflected through the investment in a paperless direction and digitalization. Sustainable practices also include the constant activity of prevention and reduction of waste, the control of emissions by production plants and the focus on products’ stock in all central warehouses to optimize transportation and reduce the logistical environmental impact.
JM: Please describe a recent packaging innovation. What about Maria Jars that were featured in a recent Videobite for Beauty Packaging?
MF: Yes, we just launched our Maria Jars line, a new line composed of three glass jars in different capacities: the Maria Jar in 50-, 75- and 100 ml. Developed primarily for ease of use with skincare products, all jar sizes in the new series feature a wide neck. The new line expands Baralan’s standard range of products, increasing the maximum jar diameter offered with a special GPI 70 thread.
The Maria Jar line is a completely new design for Baralan. Most notably, the jars’ large neck diameter makes it considerably easier for consumers to retrieve product from inside the container and maximize its use. Additionally, all size jars of the series are paired with the same accessories. To have only one pairing of accessories to various sized jars creates benefits not only in terms of supply and cost of components, but also in terms of purchasing, logistics and customization.
As another innovation of this series, the new Malang 70 cap was designed in one unique size that fits all three jars, along with the new protection disc and spatula. Moreover, the liner is assembled with no use of glue. The cap features a “double entry” thread that guarantees a consistent and more reliable closure around the circumference of the neck, ensuring integrity of the filled product with no product loss.
Aligning with Baralan’s focus on sustainability and environmentally-friendly packaging solutions, the glass jars and the cap are made with recyclable materials—glass for the Maria Jars and PP or PETG for the Malang cap—ensuring a fully recyclable lifecycle of the products. Furthermore, both the jars and the cap are each made with a portion of post-industrial recycled (PIR) materials, a means of minimizing waste by keeping as much recycled components in the production stream as possible. All Maria Jars can be customized with accessories and with various decoration techniques that use only compliant inks and water-based paints, further reducing environmental impact.
JM: What market trends led to the development of the Maria Jars?
MF: The green footprint, the common thread of most of Baralan's new products, requires particular attention to the development of products through the 3Rs and therefore products’ life cycle: from the choice of reducing the use of components and materials for their realization to the possibility to reuse the materials deriving from industrial waste and from production processes, to the ease of recycling the product. A concrete commitment, which is also visible from the characteristics of the Maria Jar line. Both the jars and the caps are made with fully recyclable materials and have already been designed for proper disposal at the end of their lifecycle. For example, for the jars, we used glass, a material that can be recycled infinitely. In addition, both the jars and the caps are made in combination with post-industrial recycled material (PIR) to minimize waste. The use of glass, which has always been part of our history, together with other recyclable materials allows us to offer an alternative and sustainable solution that integrates environmental criteria into the product industrialization process.
Furthermore, we have intentionally developed a single cap for all three versions of the Maria Jars and made a single production mold, thus avoiding energy waste within the production chain and the storage of large quantities of caps. A concrete example of reduction and a more sustainable approach.
