Jamie Matusow, Editor-in-Chief07.21.21
Caps and closures are often considered to be the final complementary components of a cosmetics package. They also carry the responsibility of maintaining the integrity of the product. Sometimes they’re even “the main event.”
Fragrance bottles have long utilized stunning caps for eye-catching allure as well as a sense of luxury. Now, closures for cosmetics are also in the spotlight not only for their ease-of-use, hygienic qualities and dispensing characteristics, but also for their ability to create a cohesive look. Suppliers have also made great progress in producing caps and closures that meet sustainable packaging criteria, including new materials, light weighting and more.
According to Beroe, providers of procurement intelligence and supplier compliance solutions, consumers want more value-added packaging, and this has increased innovations for more functional closures. In addition, Beroe’s research report on personal care, says, “Closures provide a more premium look to the packaging without a significant increase in overall costs.” (See more from Beroe in the sidebar.)
Lauren Gibli, VP of sales & operations, SGB Packaging Group, Inc., packaging suppliers for numerous cosmetic categories, tells Beauty Packaging, “Brands are becoming increasingly creative with their packaging. A new area of focus is the lid, cap, or closure and how it can be used to help differentiate, elevate or change a package design.”
Gibli says SGB has seen several interesting “broad stroke trends” in caps, including:
• Different Shapes: “Instead of going for a simple straight-wall closure, we are seeing more brands look for a unique shape like a domed cap, a sharp square or hexagonal feature.”
• Playful Proportions: “For example, they might use an oversized round cap on a cylindrical bottle to have a juxtaposition.”
• Unique Materials: “Brands are open to various materials. We have seen brands look to wood, Bakelite, Surlyn, metal, PP and more, as part of their package design.”
Enhanced deco has also been a growing trend for highlighting caps and closures.
Jean Paul Corbeil, CEO, Corpack, says they are seeing “increased demand for embossed and debossed designs on the cap to give a unique identity.” Another trend Corbeil notes: “Eco-friendly or natural materials for closures, especially for organic brands.”
Top-Tier Influencers
How can a brand decide on the ideal closure? Which is designed first—the bottle/jar or the closure? How does one influence the other? And ultimately, can caps help sway the purchase of a product?
Marc Rosen, principal, Marc Rosen Associates, affirms that caps can certainly influence the purchase of the item, in addition to aesthetics: “The weight of the cap underscores the quality of the product, and the ease of ‘handleability’ is important as well.”
Rosen, a seven-time FiFi award winner who teaches a graduate course in Package Design at Pratt Institute, says caps can play different roles in designs for fragrance and skincare bottles and jars.
He explains, “I always tell my students at Pratt that when designing a fragrance bottle or skincare container, they must first decide which will be ‘the main event,’ the bottle or the cap.” There must be a balance according to Rosen: “If they are both dramatic and make a statement, they will fight each other for attention, canceling each other out.”
Rosen says he has followed this mantra in his own designs. For example, his KL perfume fan-shaped bottle “is dramatic with a simple gold cap.” Conversely, he points to his ‘Shanghai’ bottle, which features the cap.
Whether you design for the bottle or the cap, Rosen advises: “It must be simultaneous; otherwise you create a great bottle that’s looking for its cap, or the opposite.” He says that his recent design for the Hope Night perfume bottle is a good example of a fully integrated design.
It also depends on the product and the category. Rosen says, “I think that caps tend to be of greater importance in fragrance bottles, although my design for the Lucia Magnani skincare line featured tortoise caps which created the personality of the brand.”
Jon Dinapoli, principal, Jon Michael Design, was recently called upon to design the package for the highly anticipated Dolly Parton fragrance, “Dolly”. He tells Beauty Packaging that his inspiration for this cap came directly from the superstar herself, and the image of her brand she created over 30 years ago.
“The symbol of the butterfly represents Dolly in the most perfect way and she uses this throughout her music, branding, Dollywood and now fragrance,” says Dinapoli. “My challenge was how to bring the butterfly to life in a 3-dimensional way that feels on-brand and also functional. I was inspired by Baccarat glasses, Swarovski crystals and antique chandeliers, while using the modern and fresh ‘Pinch’ color to make it undeniably Dolly.” (See video interview with Jon describing ‘Pinch’ and ‘Dolly’.)
The assignment was not a simple one to bring to life. “The main challenge,” says Dinapoli, “was to get the plastic mold to sparkle and shine like a cut crystal would. We also had some challenges with affixing the butterfly to the cap itself. Because it is molded out of one solid piece, the weight and ergonomics of the butterfly had to be perfectly engineered to ensure the look was what I wanted, but also that it was durable and easy to use.” All materials are sustainable and PCR plastic was used for all the parts on the cap.
In this case, the cap is the headliner of the package.
“The cap in this design is really the crown jewel of the overall design,” says Dinapoli. The glass is more subtle and classically beautiful, but the butterfly cap really gives the ‘wow’ factor and brings it to life. I wanted it to appear as if the crystal butterfly was fluttering in the sky and spotted this great fragrance that she just had to land on.”
Evolving Cap Trends
Dinapoli says the focus on caps goes back and forth over time.
“Over the years I have really seen this change; back when we designed Daisy by Marc Jacobs, the cap was everything and set off a huge trend of caps being the most important element. Then we saw trends move to a more minimal and apothecary approach and the caps became almost benign or like service caps. Now I feel the trends are out the door, and I choose to focus on what’s right for the project and right for the brand… in this instance [with Dolly] my gut told me it’s all in the cap.”
Sustainability-Based
As with many packaging solutions, brands are looking for sustainable solutions when it comes to lids, caps and closures, and industry suppliers have been working diligently to meet requests with compliant materials and innovative structures.
Federico Prestini, managing director, Premi Beauty Industries, tells Beauty Packaging they are receiving increased requests for mono-material solutions, and separable products with eco-friendly production possibilities. To meet this need, Premi is launching a new collection of items that will allow the client to compose “stunning packaging with a lower impact to the environment.”
Sustainability is an important pillar at Coverpla “because we need to protect our planet for the well-being of future generations,” says Gilda Mirra, VP of operations and business development. The company continues to expand existing product lines and product offerings to meet sustainability goals.
Cutri says Coverpla now offers a few different caps in their sustainable options, including recycled Surlyn, wood caps with a cork inner and PHA (a bio-based and biodegradable) material. Coverpla’s Lord cap is their latest stock cap creation, and it’s produced in PHA material.
Corpack’s Corbeil says they are also working with special materials—natural materials like wood and cork, biodegradable materials and a mix of both. A wood-, cork-, rice-blend and a biodegradable material consisting of 100% bio-based components can be industrially or home-composted.
Many of Corpack’s caps and lids are made of a cork blend called Sughera (a cork blend with 70% cork content, sourced from leftover cork production and given a second life in packaging). According to Corbeil, caps or lids made of Mixcycling Sughera “add a touch of nature to every package and help to reduce the plastic content in the packaging.” In addition, he explains, “Sughera closures look and feel pleasant to the touch—the surface is soft and velvety and the non-slip surface makes the closure easier to open.”
Recently, Corpack developed a sustainable cap made of Sughera for Maison Matine’s new perfume collection called Refresh. Corbeil says the mono-material cap supports the young French brand’s eco-conscious and creative approach to vegan ingredients and eco-secondary packaging. The closure with the embossed logo gives the glass bottle a natural, individual look and the velvety surface appeals to all the senses. The three fragrances of the Refresh collection are available as Eau de Parfum in 50ml glass bottles.
Corpack also developed an eco-friendly cap for KNEIPP’s tinted lip balm, consisting of cellulose-based material, which is biodegradable. The base cap is a mix of cork and the cellulose-based material, also biodegradable— “needs to be expanded if we are to have an impact,” says Corbeil.
Virospack specializes in the high-end cosmetic packaging industry as a leading manufacturer of droppers. Rosa Porras, marketing and communication manager, says everything at the company is developed with sustainability in mind. “Sustainability is present in all our processes, productive sections and departments, it’s in the DNA of the company, and has been for a long time. ”
Virospack offers a variety of materials—rubber, PP, PE, ABS, TPE, glass—as well as different decoration techniques, always manufacturing on site and “answering brands’ requests for differentiation.” In this way, she says, “Brands can choose the material for each component that best suits their product, depending on the brand positioning, and of course, guaranteeing compatibility with the formulation.”
Consumers’ recent focuses on clean beauty and hygiene have transferred to the type of products consumed. Porras says, “Droppers, ensuring precision, comfort and safety, have responded to these current trends.”
Virospack is investing in more sustainable materials, says Porras, “new materials, materials from PCR, or natural materials such as wood that is biodegradable, with which we have developed our natural dropper cap, Just Wood, unique in the market.”
Recently, Virospack worked with L’Atelier Shelter, a start-up men’s beard, skin & grooming brand, with an extensive range of products across different collections. The brand’s Beard Oil is packaged in an “elegant and fashionable container” manufactured and decorated entirely by Virospack. The full pack is composed of a Syringe Push Button Dropper for a more professional dispenser look, with a glass pipette, decorated in black matte finish and a 30ml molded glass bottle, water-based black spray painting, and screen printing in matte black.
Transparent Plastics
Caps and closures are also evolving due to packaging and material suppliers making great strides in new sustainable plastics materials.
Coverpla’s Cutri divulges, “We are working on a sustainable plastic cap, but it is too soon to share details.” The cap will be in production shortly.
Premi’s Prestini says they are offering PIR plastics, which are 100% recycled materials that come from the industrial production waste “and allow us to re-use recycled raw material to create new product without any technical limitation, especially in a range of colors.”
Cool Metals
TNT Global Manufacturing’s expertise has historically been in the design of complex caps, mainly in zamac, intended for perfume bottles. It gradually spread to other products, especially makeup, as illustrated by the recent Jimmy Choo range with the perfume bottle, the nail polish and the lipstick.
Boris Schaefer, VP sales TNT, says, “Our customers appreciate that we can consider a range as a whole. This brings consistency and relevance to the choice of mono- or multi-materials, engineering and production processes. Each piece benefits from both an individual and crossed expert eye and the range is therefore perfectly harmonious.”
Among TNT’s latest creations are the caps for Louboutin’s Loubiworld collection, which Schaefer says “combines the elegance of the brand’s iconic red and the metallic shine of nickel, enhanced with epoxy or plastic.” He explains, “TNT materialized the brand’s creative design through the collar, made of two pieces—an aluminum stovepipe and a brass plate, respectively nickel-anodized and nickel-galvanized—and hidden by the 100% recyclable injected zamac cap, once assembled.” Seven patterns bring this fairy tale collection to life.
Shaefer says these caps are the result of extensive study and expertise, especially in the unmolding process. He explains, “They respect the details of the design while limiting the number of zamac parts, like the body of the crocodile, which is made in one piece. It was a great project that also challenged the team for the assembly and polishing processes. Finally, each cap is finished with a common red insert, made of PP tinted in the mass.”
Warm Wood
SGB Packaging Group carries a wide range of standard caps in various materials such as Bakelite, Surlyn, PP, wood, metal and more. Lately they have seen an increase in requests for wood, “as this material has been trending specifically—and for good reason: Wood is luxurious, organic, versatile and eco-friendly.”
Gibli says, “The great thing about wood is that it can take on many identities—it can be modern, young, classic, traditional or eclectic—and easily customized into various shapes for closures on jars, bottles, or fragrances.” Wood can also be varnished with various lacquers, stained red or purple, dusted with gold, or even sandblasted.
And what’s more, says Gibli, “By its nature, wood is a sustainable and eco-friendly solution. It is a natural resource that when grown responsibly has a very low carbon footprint and bio-degrades over time.
SGB Packaging Group offers wood that is FSC and PEFC certified, all coming from sustainably managed forests in Europe.
SGB Packaging Group currently offers three sustainable innovations for wood closures: Woon (a range of cosmetic closures such as screw caps and jar lids that are made entirely from wood); Woork (a fragrance cap made of a wood with a cork inner); and Woodle (designed for products that require a plastic inner for compatibility reasons).
SGB recently worked with Unify to provide a wood cap for the brand’s collection of genderless scents “that offer clean, earth-inspired ingredients.”
Brooke Lacey, general manager, Unify, says they chose wood for their cap “because we loved the natural feeling of it. We also wanted to keep the brand very elevated and for that reason we chose the navy-blue color for the wood, so that we could marry the high-end feeling with the natural feel of the earth in the wood. We think it gives it that extra edge by adding the color.”
How did the wood cap make the overall package stand out from the competition? Lacey says, “The cap we chose helps to make our overall presentation stand out from the competition because not many companies are using wooden caps. We wanted something strong, but also feminine because we were creating a unisex brand. We felt that the wood was a strong, natural element that would stand out on someone’s vanity (no matter their gender) but also stand out on a shelf because of the substantial-ness and color of the wooden cap. We also paired the wooden cap with a thin weight font on the bottle that helps balance the two design elements.”
In addition, Lacey says the wood being a natural element “was essential to our brand identity because we go back to the earth in our designs, branding, and scents. We wanted something grounding that would help represent what we stood for as a company and I think it does a great job in doing so. We get many compliments and reviews on the uniqueness of our wooden caps.”
“Re wood” is the first accessories collection line from Premi Beauty Industries made out of wood without glue and plastic components inside. Prestini says the components of each accessory can be easily separated and correctly disposed of by end consumers. He explains, “The main feature is that the screw part is made directly on the natural material in order to avoid the inner plastic component where the thread is usually situated.” The wood is certified FSC, and can be decorated in really interesting ways, says Prestini. “From a natural finish, to shiny or varnishing, wood is [increasingly] becoming a new main character in the beauty segment.”
Overall, says Prestini, “[Wood offers a] natural feeling mixed with special colors to create new experiences for the final user, opening new roads for product communication.”
Looking Ahead
According to research from Beroe, “The plastic caps and closures market is under immense pressure to provide better-looking caps that provide metal or wood-like finishes.”
SGB’s Gibli, says, “We think that there will be continued focused on lids, caps, and closures in package development. We will begin to see some pretty unique closures on the market, and look forward to being part of the creativity that will emerge.”
At TNT, Schaefer says, “Refillability and reusability are the new standard. Perfume caps are items with very high added value which will have a long life, thanks to the principle of refill of the bottles. This trend is spreading to skincare and makeup products. This is interesting because it opens up creative options for pieces that were fairly simple due to a short life cycle, until now.”
Corpack’s Corbeil reiterates: “The trend or demand for closures made of sustainable materials is here to stay.”
Beauty Packaging asked veteran packaging designer Jon Dinapoli to reflect on the most memorable cap he has designed to-date.
Dinapoli’s response: “Gosh that is a hard one! I’ve been lucky enough to work on so many great projects and many of them have had really innovative and memorable caps. If I had to pick one I think I would have to go with Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Lovers—these caps were all handmade and each one was unique… not to mention the launch was a collection of 5 of them. We created these dolls after real people in Gwen’s world. The creativity and process to get there was so unique and the technical challenges we had to overcome were probably the most difficult of my career for a single project. However… we do have some pretty spectacular projects coming out soon that we’ll be able to talk about as well.”
The proliferation of skincare products is giving the packaging industry a boost. According to a Research and Markets report, the Global Cosmetic Jars Packaging Market is expected to grow from $1.8 billion in 2020 to $2.2 billion by the end of 2025, at a CAGR of 4.44%.
A recent MarketsandMarkets report estimates the overall caps and closures market will grow from nearly $50 billion in 2015 to almost $69 billion in 2021, at a CAGR of 5.62%.
Looking specifically at the Personal Care market, Beroe (www.beroeinc.com/beroe-live-ai), providers of procurement intelligence and supplier compliance solutions, found that following “a slump in 2020, the caps and closures market is expected to see an upward, bullish trend in the times to come, thanks to emerging rigid packaging markets and the demand for more aesthetic and value-added closures from caps and closures manufacturers.”
The Beroe data show that the personal care caps and closures market may grow by 5-6% in the next two years due to increasing demand for more premium and luxury segments.
The caps and closures trends in North America incorporate “the sudden growth in organic cosmetic and male grooming products.”
The Asia-Pacific metal caps and closures market will record the fastest growth, says Beroe, with a CAGR of about 7-8% in 2020-24, due to the growth of personal care products.
Growth in the luxe Caps & Closures market is also anticipated in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Additionally, the report finds, “The plastic caps and closures market is under immense pressure to provide better-looking caps that provide metal or wood-like finishes.”
At press time, the annual Fragrance Foundation Awards were scheduled for virtual presentations on June 10 (Marc Jacobs and Christian Louboutin Loubirouge received top honors at the event). Here are some of the packaging finalists in the Luxury and Prestige & Popular categories, which displayed over-the-top caps.
Luxury Fragrance Caps
Fragrance Foundation Winner
Luxury—Packaging of the Year: Christian Louboutin
Loubirouge
Christian Louboutin Loubirouge pays tribute to the brand’s iconic stiletto with its signature red-lacquered sole. Loubirouge has a globe-shaped cap to spotlight the mini shoe, produced in zamac. The oriential spicy juice is housed in a red bottle, and both are inspired by a glamorous Parisian cabaret. ($300 for 90ml)
Fragrance Foundation Packaging Finalist
Tiziana Terenzi Atlantide
A golden starfish—with a 24k gold finish—clutches this cap on Tiziana Terenzi Atlantide. The sea-inspired juice contains at least a 30% concentration of pure oil—one of the highest standards in the industry. ($690 for 100ml)
Prestige and Popular Fragrance Caps
Fragrance Foundation Packaging Finalist
Giorgio Armani My Way
Giorgio Armani My Way is a refillable bottle with a blue and gold stone cap, representing Earth, “englobed by a golden ring, symbolizing a unique path illuminated by every encounter along the way,” according to the brand. ($128 for 90ml)
Fragrance Foundation Packaging Winner
Prestige/Popular- Packaging of the Year—Marc Jacobs Perfect Eau de Parfum
Marc Jacobs Perfect Eau de Parfum focuses on the message, “You are perfect as you are,” whether that is serious, eclectic or ladylike, all which are represented by the mismatched charms on the cap. Inspired by Jacobs’ wrist tattoo that says “Perfect,” the weighted glass bottle includes a shoe, a domino, a star-shaped balloon, and more, on its cap. ($128 for 100ml)
