07.16.09
Taking a Secondary Look: Cartons & Boxes
Companies are trending toward greener, more ornate alternatives.
By Joanna Cosgrove, Online Editor
“The boxes used for today’s high-end personal care, cosmetic and fragrance products are increasingly unique and brand-driven,” says Andy Barra of Oneonta NY-based Burt Rigid Box, a company that’s been making paperboard boxes, slipcases and cans since 1886.“Companies strive to create highly recognizable brand identities, and rely heavily on select materials and chic graphics in order to ‘wow’ the consumer at each new release. All too often, this approach overlooks the possibilities afforded by truly unique structural packaging.In turn, the trend away from interesting secondary packaging eliminates a value-added component that can substantially aid point-of-sale decisions.”
High-end box manufacturers can offer consumer-friendly packaging options that are both cost-effective and beautiful. “We believe that…the pendulum will swing back toward innovative box structure, as it often has in the past,” says Barra. “On the other hand, the availability of a wide diversity of innovative materials such as eco-friendly adhesives and papers points toward a renaissance in box design.”
The current economy plus the growing penchant for all things green has had a tangible effect on the paperboard packaging segment. “Companies’ desires to go ‘green’ are currently and inevitably coming into conflict with the use of supposedly cost-effective materials like plastic and metal,” explains Barra. “The proliferation of green materials presents a challenge for buyers: the language surrounding environmental advertising is often confusing and inconsistent, and products must be examined carefully to ensure their true total cost and environmental impact. In addition to upfront costs and certification fees that may be passed on to the customer, many green options require separate recycling, many years in landfills to biodegrade, or other unexpected costs.
Paperboard, says Barra, offers the best green alternative and provides maximum flexibility for graphics with a high “wow” factor. “Recycled board covered with a printed wrap combines exciting design possibilities with sustainable and biodegradable/compostable materials to create unique boxes that can be reused for many purposes,” he says.
To address the “cost vs. environment” trade-off, Burt is currently developing a product to replace vacuum form trays with an insert that will meet both the design and green goals of its customers. Notably, all materials of the package will be easily accepted into the normal recycling stream.
Artful Box
Maesa Packaging took the art of paperboard packaging to a new level with the design of a fragrance box for Good True Beautiful Fragrance. The New York, NY-based company designed and manufactured an incredibly intricate fragrance box in a “wardrobe style” design, which was chosen so the consumer would have the unexpected experiences of patterns and tones of warm color inside the box. When the round, hinged box is opened, the bottle is propped up and displayed on a pedestal. Zorbit Resources (now part of Maesa Packaging) engineered a mechanism in the box that enabled the top support to be invisible when the box is opened. Each box has 14 separate printed wraps, each hand-wrapped and tightly registered to one another. According to the company, every Good True Beautiful box takes 6.5 manhours to craft.
Changing gears from the sublime to the simplistic, last fall Diamond Packaging executed a pared down, yet elegant carton for Coty Inc.’s Vera Wang Look fragrance to underscore its “bold, seductive and captivating” qualities. Diamond, in turn, worked closely with Coty to create a package that faithfully reflected the iconic fashion designer’s personality and style. The carton is characterized by attractive graphics that were achieved by offset printing multiple colors followed by dull, stampable varnish and a UV gloss spot coating pattern that represents the brush stroke of the hand-drawn bottle. An overall embossed pattern and an embossed logo on the front panel add dimension and complex textures to the presentation, reminiscent of the fragrance itself.
“The customer had a specific design pattern they wanted us to duplicate for the overall look of the entire carton,” says Dennis Bacchetta, director of marketing for Diamond Packaging. The challenge was in making a hand-engraved embossing die that matched a small sample of a special stock. “It took Metal Magic a number of test dies and a trip to their facility in Phoenix before a match was made,” says Bacchetta. “Each test die took more than 12 hours to make; it took five dies before we had something we could show the customer. Once the match was made, we now had to duplicate the match in production. The make-ready was time-consuming and had to match the proof from the engraving. Success was achieved by partnering with a die maker and machine operator with a high level of skill and commitment.”
MWV of Richmond, VA, recently debuted its latest carton solution for secondary packaging: a DuoFold fragrance carton with a corrugated insert that’s placed during the manufacturing process, eliminating the labor needed on the filling line to manually insert corrugated pads.
John Perkins, the company’s vice president, personal and beauty care for the Americas, says that the DuoFold technology will provide brand owners with a much higher degree of flexibility in the combination of multi-material packaging. “This technology allows for applications that are highly visible to the consumer such as registered visual and paperboard combinations as well as applications like the fragrance cartons where the impact to the consumer is transparent while offering true savings to our customers,” he explained.
Clearly Unique
Hamilton, Ontario-based Transparent Packaging Inc. recently introduced a unique scented transparent folding carton that not only allows consumers to see the product, but also entices the consumer to pick the product up off the shelf to smell it.
The company says this type of packaging allows brand owners and consumer product manufacturers to attract consumers with another of their product's key attributes—its fragrance—without the addition of a secondary paper scratch and sniff sticker, which can have a denigrating effect on the packaging image.
Gap also chose clear plastic for the launch of its Close fragrance luxury gift set. DAPY Paris specially developed and produced a sturdy, clear PS box to house the brand’s 50- and 100ml bottles. The case’s transparent U-shaped base features an integrated star-shaped base to hold the fragrance upright. The top cover employs an integrated chimney to hold the bottle’s cap steady. The Gap logo is elegantly silk screened on the front panel.
Looking Ahead
Vera Wang’s Look fragrance features a brush stroke rendition of a hand-drawn bottle. |
He also expects there to be mounting consumer and media pressure on consumer goods companies to forego cartons altogether. To counterbalance those dubious trends, Barra says, “Opportunities will emerge for high-end box manufacturers who are flexible, offer new capabilities to the industry, can easily react to short lead times for any quantity, and are able to provide design input derived from past trends and problem-solving experience.”
On another positive note, the trend toward including more graphics and less text on packaging will favor the rigid box industry. “Creative structural design will regain importance in this streamlined aesthetic environment,” he says. “At Burt, we have several initiatives in-place, which include adapting our own unique setup box machinery to produce unconventional shapes that will be introduced across several market segments.”
And last but not least, Barra says that it’s important to incorporate the American consumers’ need to look and feel beautiful into the design and execution of cartons and boxes. “As consumers become more educated about sustainable materials, they will increasingly equate beauty products packaged in striking, reusable boxes with feeling great, inside and out,” he concludes.
