BOLOGNA, Italy — The cosmetics packaging supplier landscape is morphing faster than ever before, with recent sustainable and high-tech solutions, as firms proceed to consolidate and the industry confronts an ongoing panoply of socio-economic and geopolitical headwinds.

Those were amongst key takeaways from the recent edition of Cosmopack, the packaging branch of Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna, the business-to-business beauty trade show that ran from March 16 to twenty.

The recent session marked the second in-person event for the reason that start of the coronavirus pandemic. It registered greater than 250,000 attendees from 153 countries, versus 265,000-plus attendees pre-health crisis, in 2019.

In 2023, Cosmoprof had 2,984 exhibitors, up 11 percent versus 2022, from 64 countries.

The sprawling aisles of packaging manufacturers at Cosmopack were percolating with innovation that pushed sustainability to the max and offered increasingly personalized beauty solutions.

Some novelties were spotted at Cosmax, the contract manufacturer based in South Korea. It showcased two home-use compact beauty devices. One was Pyxoh, which temporarily dyes hair in colourful streaks via a user-friendly device and app, from which individuals can select their desired shades and effect. The gizmo comes with a comb to make use of on hair and from which an ink made from cosmetics ingredients is injected.

Cosmax’s Color Jam device lets people create their very own makeup palettes in a sustainable fashion based on their skin tone and preferences. The associated app allows for virtual try-ons in the varied color cosmetics creations Color Jam makes. Once a variety is made, the device prints powder products within the chosen shades in tiny quantities, in pressed powder form.

Color Jam can also be used for nail art, because the little machine can inject graphics on nail-shaped adhesives.

Elsewhere, color cosmetics-makers were using high-tech for daring effects, novel finishes, and ultrafaceted and transformative textures to spice up products’ visual appeal online.

Chromavis, as an illustration, presented recent technologies similar to Maya, giving multidimension and a sculptural feel to creamy textures; 3Deep, offering supercharged color, and Page One, originated from merging lipstick right into a powder form.

“The result shouldn’t be a powder, it’s not a poured [product], but a bridge between the 2 worlds. It’s really about mixing two media to create this recent unique, ultrasensorial texture [enabling us] to charge it with lively ingredients,” said Cecilia Schena, senior vice chairman of selling and business development at Chromavis.

“It’s all about cross-fertilization of technologies, ideas, formulas to see where we are able to go,” she continued.

Makeup makers have gotten ever more cutting-edge.

“We’re doing increasingly experimentation with artificial intelligence in formulations,” said Renato Semerari, chief executive officer of Intercos, speaking from the corporate’s headquarters in Agrate Brianza, Italy, prior to the opening of Cosmoprof.

“We now have developed an algorithm that can give us predictions on stability and compatibility of formulas, and this is able to allow us to hurry up the event timing,” he continued. “But we would like to go farther, really stepping into formulation with AI.”

Key to that is data-gathering to construct reliable algorithms.

“It’s going to take years before we get there, because we’d like to construct this database,” said Semerari. “Definitely, that is going to be a part of the long run.”

At Intercos, experimentation in AI began two years ago via Intercos Intelligence, an internal app that culls insights from the corporate’s greater than 700 international clients and Google Analytics, providing end-consumers’ perspective and demands.

 “I don’t think change is quick enough now,” said Dario Ferrari, founder and president of Intercos. “We now have to enter transformation, which is far more radical.”

Back over at Cosmopack, in a bid to be as sustainable as possible, some packaging manufacturers, similar to Italy’s iTiT Cosmetics, were highlighting their newfangled approaches. The corporate’s Beauty Snacks concept uses tiny biodegradable, biocompostable and edible transparent capsules made from polymers derived from glucose. Those may be full of several types of makeup, similar to lip balms, concealers, blushes, highlighters and kajals, made from waterless formulas.

“The concept is to offer the shoppers only the majority,” said Lisa Proserpio, packaging development manager at iTiT Cosmetics, explaining the nubs of product might be used as testers or travel-size products.

China’s Hangzhou Ebei Industrial introduced the Angled Essence Dropper Bottle that, due to its flacon that may sit at an angle, was created to permit people to make use of every last drop of liquid or creamy products to avoid waste.

Upcycling was a growing trend at Cosmopack. Cosmei, as an illustration, presented Earth Beat Denim Lipstick, coming in a tube made from acetate, 10 percent of which was created from fibers derived from recycled denim.

Bakic Design showcased a bottle, from the Kaer line, made from solid shampoo with upcycled ingredients like oranges or blackcurrant.

“Sustainability is a serious subject,” said Dominic Bakic, the corporate’s CEO. “We wanted to make use of something that’s consistently out of discarded materials.”

Bakic also conceived an idea that’s a light-weight bottle of recycled plastic with a design based on bionic structures, with 50 percent less material than a standard bottle.

Riffing on the metaverse, the group developed cosmetic packaging with a 3D, hologram effect.

HCT remained focused on sustainability for its packaging solutions.

“We see normally that brands have been attempting to do things faster with tools that exist already, as an alternative of going custom and taking more risk,” said Denis Maurin, president of sales and innovation at HCT.

Due to this fact, the group constantly pushes for more innovation and tooling. HCT was showcasing its Flex Technology line, made from monomaterial PC packaging, bringing recent gestures to the market.

One container and not using a pump had on top a silicon button to be pressed for dishing out liquid product. One other disbursed foam and not using a pump actuator.

“It’s also a fun gesture,” said Maurin, who presented, as well, a recent spray dispenser for powder. “You may mix different technology and ideas together.”

Within the makeup category, he noted many brands are looking for to cut back the variety of shades contained of their palettes.

“What we’ve been attempting to create is a system where people can refill easily and offer different variations in all of the palettes,” he said.

So HCT focused on the pans themselves, creating them in the identical shapes and dimensions in materials similar to aluminum, PET, wood, paper and concrete.

“The concept is to combine and match,” said Maurin, whose design team also dug into HCT archives to search out inspiration from palettes with pans removable and buildable in a snap.

While innovating on product, packaging firms keep consolidating through mergers and acquisitions, and growing their supply chains by buying up other groups.

The industry has been buffeted by sky-high raw material and shipping costs and delays, a few of that are easing.

“There’s loads of consolidation occurring out there,” said Bakic. He believes the explanations to be fourfold.

For one, some firms have struggled financially throughout the pandemic. “So there are opportunities to purchase,” he said.

Second, loads of financial capital is vital to accumulate a recent plant and keep it running, subsequently sometimes investors are vital for backing.

“The third one — we see a giant swath getting back from Asia to local supply chains. As a way to ramp up manufacturing, it’s really expensive,” said Bakic.

Further, suppliers keep trying to offer added service to their customers, similar to filling, and are making acquisitions to assist with the method.

“We’re trying to accumulate our core competency,” said Bakic. “We aren’t going broader, we’re going somewhat bit deeper and focusing somewhat bit more.”

The group has invested in technology, but shouldn’t be looking beyond organic growth for now.

“We’ve been able to take a position energy and money in a giant, global program when it comes to constructing recent factories,” said Ferrari of Intercos, which posted net sales of 835.6 million euros in 2022, up 24 percent over 2021.

The group last 12 months expanded its fragrance production facility in Italy’s Olgiate Comasco region, which produces hair, body and skincare products, to span 538,200 square feet. Intercos also began expanding its plant in Poland and seeks to stretch its industrial footprint elsewhere across the globe in the subsequent three to 4 years.

“I’d prefer [to] spend money on constructing plants than really buy a competitor,” said Ferrari.

Cosmax has the same philosophy. With a world footprint from factories in South Korea, China, the U.S., Indonesia and Thailand, the corporate grows by starting recent sites from scratch, in line with B.J. Lee, CEO of Cosmax U.S.A., who sees Europe and Brazil as goal territories.

ITiT Cosmetics next 12 months will relocate to a facility that’s 4 times greater than its current one near Como. The move is being made to scale up but in addition to turn out to be more sustainable with an eco-friendlier facility.

Meanwhile, Italy’s Gotha Cosmetics is taking a unique approach, opting to bolster its industrial process by integrating other firms. Earlier this month, the makeup manufacturer acquired Beauty Rain Srl, which focuses on assembling and packaging cosmetics for third parties. It’s based in Chieve, Italy, about an hour’s drive from Milan and from Lallio, where Gotha is predicated.

That deal followed two other operations finalized last 12 months, including the takeover of the Mia Cosmetic Factory Srl filling company and acquisition of a majority stake in iColor Group, a China-based cosmetics formulation and filling company.

“So now we’ve got the majority production, the filling part and the assembling part. The aim was to have the total supply chain under [our] control and give you the chance to supply our clients this sort of service, which may be very necessary [considering] all of the [issues around] logistics and raw materials,” said Gotha Cosmetics’ marketing director Luca Lussana, who joined the corporate six months ago.

“We’ve been expanding our supply chain lots,” said HCT’s Maurin. “We now have loads of partners in Europe and within the U.S.”

The group realized, as an illustration, that hair care packaging must be created near to where the filler is positioned, because it shouldn’t be sustainable to move large bottles for products from Asia.

“You continue to want the innovation from China,” said Maurin. “But sometimes it’s about constructing a tool in China, proving it really works after which duplicating it in Europe and offering each options to customers.”

HCT has not finished making acquisitions.

“The important thing for us is to search out the perfect partners which have flexibility and may move fast,” said Maurin. “We’ll take our time to search out the nice ones.”